current Chinese student enrollments
Dear RMIT University,
I am writing to request the latest data on the number of Chinese students enrolled at your institution.
Yours faithfully,
Nicholas L'Estrange
Dear Nicholas
I refer to the above email in which you sought under the Freedom of
Information Act 1982 (“FOI Act”) certain information about Chinese
students at RMIT.
The request for information was expressed in the following terms:
" request the latest data on the number of Chinese students enrolled at
your institution"
Validity of Request
The FOI Act creates a right of access to documents of a Victorian agency,
such as the University. Section 13 of the FOI Act provides that the right
of access must be exercised “in accordance with this Act”. Section 17 of
the FOI Act sets out several pre-requisites before a valid request for
access to documents exists under the Act.
Application Fee owing
In order to ensure that your request is valid under the FOI Act, your
application must be accompanied by a fee of
$28.40 (Freedom of Information (Access Charges) Regulations 2014) or
provide evidence that you qualify to have the
application fee waived.
Application fee is payable only by cheque or Money Order
All cheques or Money Orders are to be made payable to:
RMIT University – FOI Application Fee
Compliance, Risk & Regulation, RMIT
GPO Box 2476, Melbourne VIC 3001, Australia
Invalid request for access: ambiguity or lack of clarity (s 17(2))
Another of the requirements of s 17 is for a request to provide such
information concerning the documents sought as is reasonably necessary to
enable a responsible officer of the agency to identify those documents.
That is, an applicant must strive to define with as much precision as
possible the documents sought in terms that will enable the relevant
officer of the agency to constructively search for those documents,=.
Ambiguous and unclear matters
1. Please clarify the time frame/date range regarding the data/documents
sought
2 Please clarify what data you are seeking. Are you seeking only a total
number enrolled or a particular breakdown e.g number of students based in
Australia, or located internationally.
I look forward to receiving your application fee and amended request
addressing the matters above so the RMIT can progress this matter
Kind Regards
Andy
Locutus Sum left an annotation ()
The applicant has not told Right to Know the status of this request and I have been asked to update the status.
Note 1: Mostly I classify a response like this one to say "clarification requested" because the agency has told the applicant that some more information (or money!) is needed before the request will be processed. With this request, I have put the response in the category of "refused" because it is some time since the agency responded and the applicant does not appear to have made a follow-up. It is possible that a follow-up has been made by the ordinary post or by private email but Right to Know has not heard anything about this. Even if the applicant did not follow-up agency questions, it does not mean that the agency will refuse the request when an application is made in the correct (required) manner.
Note 2: Although an application under the Freedom of Information Act 1983 of the Commonwealth of Australia does not require an application fee, this is not the case with applications in the states and territories of Australia. Then an applicant must usually pay a fee, or the request is not valid. Also, the Commonwealth agencies might demand payment of a fee to cover extra processing costs. If the fee is not paid, the request will not be processed.