Dear Digital Transformation Agency,

Please provide any emails sent or received by the Digital Transformation Agency between the 1st of March 2021 and the 10th of March 2021 that contain the terms “COVIDSafe” and (“review” or “reviews” or “rating” or “5 star”).

Yours faithfully,

Concerned Citizen

Dear DTA FOI,

I would like to revise the scope to any emails sent or received by the Digital Transformation Agency between the 1st of March 2021 and the 10th of March 2021 that contain the terms “COVIDSafe” and (“reviews” or “rating” or “5 star”).

Yours sincerely,

Concerned Citizen

Dear DTA FOI,

In your previous email you indicated that the search term “review” returned many results as it is included in a standard email footer. I have narrowed the scope of my request to only include emails with the terms “COVIDSafe” and (“reviews” (plural) or “rating” or “5 star”).

I could not see the plural “reviews” contained in the standard email footer so I would hope the revised scope would only identify emails sent about reviews about the COVIDSafe app or the rating of the COVIDSafe app or about a 5 star rating for the COVIDSafe app.

Does the revised scope still result in an unmanageable number of documents being identified or are you suggesting that you think it might?

If it is the former then I will consider whether there’s any way to further narrow the scope of my request. If it is the latter then I’d request that you please check to see if there are now a more manageable number of documents or identified by the revised scope of my request.

Yours sincerely,

Concerned Citizen

Dear DTA FOI,

Thank you for your email. I am requesting an internal review of your decision.

In your letter you indicate that you are refusing my request because your are "satisfied that all reasonable steps have occurred to locate the requested documents and that these documents do not exist".

My original request was for "any emails sent or received by the Digital Transformation Agency between the 1st of March 2021 and the 10th of March 2021 that contain the terms “COVIDSafe” and (“review” or “reviews” or “rating” or “5 star”)".

In your email of the 6th of October you indicated that the word "review" appeared in a standard email footer and that resulted in a large number of documents being identified. I replied to your email on the same day to revise my scope to no longer include the term "review" in the singular (as it appears in the standard email footer) but to only include the plural version "reviews" - and I quote: "any emails sent or received by the Digital Transformation Agency between the 1st of March 2021 and the 10th of March 2021 that contain the terms “COVIDSafe” and (“reviews” or “rating” or “5 star”)."

On the same day you then replied to state that (and I quote): "Narrowing scope by [sic] remove the term "review" will still result in the same outcome, as you are still seeking for DTA to search use [sic] the terms' reviews or rating or 5 staff [sic]."

I replied to explain that "I could not see the plural “reviews” contained in the standard email footer so I would hope the revised scope would only identify emails sent about reviews about the COVIDSafe app or the rating of the COVIDSafe app or about a 5 star rating for the COVIDSafe app". I also asked if you had actually searched using the search terms in my revised scope or if you were merely stating that you felt that it would likely produce the same result.

To which you replied:
"Now that I have a better understanding of your request, I'll make some enquires and I'll get back to you".

Subsequently I did not receive a reply until your decision to refuse my request. In your refusal you refer to your email of the 6th of October where you informed me that the term "review" appears in the standard email footer and that "On the same day, the FOI Officer made enquiries into locating the requested documents and found that no review of COVID Safe occurred during 1 March 2021 and 10 March 2021. Additionally, the terms ‘ 5 star/ ratings’ is not used by DTA to assess performance, which is why we could not find documents with the scope of your request".

Your refusal states that you are satisfied that all reasonable steps were taken to locate the documents I requested. But you have not said whether you ever searched for emails using the search terms in my revised scope. Did you search for "any emails sent or received by the Digital Transformation Agency between the 1st of March 2021 and the 10th of March 2021 that contain the terms “COVIDSafe” and (“reviews” or “rating” or “5 star”)."?

Furthermore your refusal states that "no review of COVID Safe occurred during 1 March 2021 and 10 March 2021. Additionally, the terms ‘ 5 star/ ratings’ is not used by DTA to assess performance" and provide this as the reason that you "could not find documents with [sic] the scope of" my request.

You have misunderstood my request. I am not seeking documents about an internal DTA review of COVIDSafe and nor do I suggest that DTA use the terms '5 star' to assess performance. I was specifically requesting emails about “COVIDSafe” and (“reviews” or “rating” or “5 star”) between the 1st and 10th of March 2021 because I am trying to understand why there was an unusual number of 5 star ratings submitted to Apple's App Store for the COVIDSafe app during that period.

In the week from:
- the 8th to the 15th of February, 2021 there were 18 ratings submitted (including 4 5 star ratings),
- the 15th to the 22nd of February, 2021 there were 22 ratings submitted (including 5 5 star ratings),
- the 22nd of February to the 1st of March, 2021 there were 19 ratings submitted (including 6 5 star ratings)

But on the week from the 1st to the 8th of March, 2021 there were 120 ratings submitted with 62 5 star ratings. This seems unusual.

I would like to understand why there was an unusual number of ratings submitted to the App Store during this period at the start of March 2021.

To this end my request was for any emails sent or received by the Digital Transformation Agency between the 1st of March 2021 and the 10th of March 2021 that contain the terms “COVIDSafe” and (“reviews” or “rating” or “5 star”).

I am requesting an internal review of the handling of my FOI request. I would ask that in performing the review you answer the following questions:

Was a search conducted using the search terms in my revised scope (using only the plural form of the word "reviews" so as not to include emails with the standard email footer)?

If such a search was performed, did it identify any documents?

If such a search was not performed then does this constitute "all reasonable steps" and was the decision maker correct that "no documents exist"?

Yours sincerely,

Concerned Citizen

Dear DTA FOI,

Thank you for conducting an Internal review of the original decision. I understand that I am also able to ask the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to review this decision. However, if you are able to treat this email as an administrative matter then I may not need to ask for a further review.

The original decision and your internal review have repeated the same information, but you have failed to answer the questions I posed when I requested an internal review.

You point out that you performed searches using the search terms in my original request and those searches identified too many documents as one of the terms was the word "review" (singular) which is contained in standard email footers.

I subsequently responded to your request that I revise the search terms so as to avoid using terms contained in the standard email footer. I then provided some revised search terms.

Neither your original decision or your internal review indicate that you actually performed the search using the search terms in my revised request.

In my request for an internal review, I specifically asked:

"Was a search conducted using the search terms in my revised scope (using only the plural form of the word "reviews" so as not to include emails with the standard email footer)?
If such a search was performed, did it identify any documents?
If such a search was not performed then does this constitute "all reasonable steps" and was the decision maker correct that "no documents exist"?

Before I request a review from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner could you please clarify this for me?

Yours sincerely,

Concerned Citizen

Dear DTA FOI,

Sorry, but this is still somewhat ambiguous. For the avoidance of doubt did you perform a search using the revised search terms (with the term “reviews” rather than “review”)?

Yours sincerely,

Concerned Citizen