Dear Department of Defence,

Under s 17 of the FOI Act, I require the Department to compile a list of all preliminary charges assessments for FOI applications made in FY17/18 YTD, detailing the following:
Column 1......................................Column 2...............................................Column 3
FOI Reference Number...............Preliminary Charges Assessment $....Did FOI Proceed Y/N

Yours faithfully,

Verity Pane

P.S. Section 17 is not ‘discretionary’ for the agency. Defence keeps all its FOI charges decisions in Objective, which is a computer information system, along with the record of what happened to those FOI decisions. The information sought does not exist in any Defence document as a stand-alone summary. That satisfies the pre-conditions for s 17 to apply, and as per s 17(1)(ii) the agency is obliged to compile the information requested.

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 1982 - SECT 17 Requests involving use of computers etc.

Requests involving use of computers etc.
(1) Where:

(a) a request (including a request in relation to which a practical refusal reason exists) is made in accordance with the requirements of subsection 15(2) to an agency;

(b) it appears from the request that the desire of the applicant is for information that is not available in discrete form in written documents of the agency; and

(ba) it does not appear from the request that the applicant wishes to be provided with a computer tape or computer disk on which the information is recorded; and

(c) the agency could produce a written document containing the information in discrete form by:

(i) the use of a computer or other equipment that is ordinarily available to the agency for retrieving or collating stored information; or

(ii) the making of a transcript from a sound recording held in the agency;

the agency shall deal with the request as if it were a request for access to a written document so produced and containing that information and, for that purpose, this Act applies as if the agency had such a document in its possession

(2) An agency is not required to comply with subsection (1) if compliance would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the agency from its other operations.

*****

A reminder that the Guidelines, which are not a statutory instrument and do not have force of law, are indeed guidelines, but in case of any conflict between the guidelines and the FOI Act and its statutory instruments, the wording of the Act takes precedence.

To avoid a fraudulent consultation delay - I do not and will not vary or change the scope of this FOI.

In order to understand the relevant files this may capture, in your acknowledgement, can you please provide the following:
* The number of FOIs in FY17/18 YTD where a charges estimate was issued
* The number of FOIs in FY17/18 YTD where a charges estimate was withdrawn by Defence

Dear Department of Defence,

Whoops, restated this application that you are already fraudulently stalling.

Yours faithfully,

Verity Pane