Thank you for contacting the Freedom of Information (FOI) team in Services
Australia (the Agency).

This email acknowledges your correspondence and provides some general
information in relation to FOI.

Charges

The Agency will advise you if a charge is payable to process your request
and the amount of any such charge as soon as practicable. No charge is
payable for providing a person with their own personal information.

Your address

The FOI Act requires you to provide us with an address which we can send
notices to. We will send correspondence and notices to your email address.
Please advise us as soon as possible if you wish correspondence to be sent
to another address or if your email address changes.

Administrative release of documents

The Agency has administrative access arrangements ('the arrangements') for
the release of certain documents without the need for a formal FOI
request. Unless you advise us otherwise, in processing your request we may
provide you with documents under these arrangements where appropriate and
any parts of your FOI request that are addressed by documents released
under the arrangements will be considered to be withdrawn. The
arrangements do not extend to information or materials of third parties.
You will be notified when documents are released to you under the
arrangements.

Exclusion of staff details

The Agency is working towards ensuring all staff have a choice about
whether they provide their full name, personal logon identifiers and
direct contact details in response to FOI requests. Where such details are
included in documents they will be redacted. If you request staff details
as part of your FOI application, this may add to processing time and
applicable charges as it will be necessary to consider whether these
details are exempt under the FOI Act.
On this basis, unless you tell us otherwise, we will assume these details
are out of scope of your request and they will be redacted under section
22 of the FOI Act.

**********************************************************************
IMPORTANT: This e-mail is for the use of the intended recipient only and
may contain information that is confidential, commercially valuable and/or
subject to legal or parliamentary privilege. If you are not the intended
recipient you are notified that any review, re-transmission, disclosure,
dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon,
this information is prohibited and may result in severe penalties. If you
have received this e-mail in error please notify the sender immediately
and delete all electronic and hard copies of this transmission together
with any attachments. Please consider the environment before printing this
e-mail
**********************************************************************

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Thank you for contacting the Freedom of Information (FOI) team in Services
Australia (the Agency).

This email acknowledges your correspondence and provides some general
information in relation to FOI.

Administrative release of documents   

The Agency has administrative access arrangements ('the arrangements') for
the release of certain documents without the need for a formal FOI
request. If you agree to the release of documents under these
arrangements, we may provide you with documents under the arrangements,
where appropriate.  

Any parts of your FOI request that are addressed by documents being
released under the arrangements will be considered withdrawn. The
arrangements do not extend to information or materials of third parties.
You will be notified when documents are released to you under the
arrangements. 

Personal information of Agency staff 

We consider staff details to be personal information of those staff
members. As part of the FOI application process, we will seek your consent
to exclude the following information from documents that may be captured
by your request:  

* names of Services Australia staff below the Senior Executive level
(junior staff) 
* direct staff telephone numbers, signatures, logon identifiers and
email addresses. 

If you consent to exclude this information, we will treat it as outside
the scope of your request and therefore irrelevant under Section 22 of the
FOI Act. 

Charges 

No charge is payable for providing a person with their own personal
information.
If you are requesting non-personal information the Agency will advise you
as soon as practicable if a charge is payable to process your request, and
the amount of any such charge. 

How we will send documents to you 

Unless you have requested to receive correspondence and documents relating
to your FOI request via post we will communicate with you via this email
address. Some documents may be too large to send to you via email. If
applicable, we will seek your consent to provide the requested documents
to you electronically via a secure file sharing platform. Please advise us
as soon as possible if you wish correspondence or documents to be sent to
another address, or if your email address changes. 

How long do I have to wait? 

We are required to answer your request within 30 days unless the time
frame is extended under the FOI Act.  

**********************************************************************
IMPORTANT: This e-mail is for the use of the intended recipient only and
may contain information that is confidential, commercially valuable and/or
subject to legal or parliamentary privilege. If you are not the intended
recipient you are notified that any review, re-transmission, disclosure,
dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon,
this information is prohibited and may result in severe penalties. If you
have received this e-mail in error please notify the sender immediately
and delete all electronic and hard copies of this transmission together
with any attachments. Please consider the environment before printing this
e-mail
**********************************************************************

hide quoted sections