FoI Disclosure Log
Dan Monceaux made this Freedom of Information request to Geoscience Australia
This request has been closed to new correspondence from the public body. Contact us if you think it ought be re-opened.
Dear Geoscience Australia,
I visited your website today and discovered that the link to your agency's Freedom of Information Act Disclosure Log was broken.
I hope you are able to remedy this soon, and will alert me once the problem has been corrected.
For diagnostic purposed, the link which is broken is: http://www.innovation.gov.au/AboutUs/Inf...
I found the above link by clicking on the"FOI Disclosure Log" graphic on the following webpage: http://www.ga.gov.au/ips/foi-disclosure-...
Yours faithfully,
Dan Monceaux
Dear Geoscience Australia,
Could you please confirm that you received my email of 21 November 2016, regarding the agency's FoI Disclosure Log?
Many thanks,
Dan Monceaux
Locutus Sum left an annotation ()
Mr Monceaux, I have been doing some small research. The reason the link is broken is because it references a main url for a department called "Innovation" but this department is now called "Industry". The link to www.innovation.gov.au should say www.industry.gov.au, so that the complete, correct URL would be http://industry.gov.au/AboutUs/Informati... . I could not see any disclosures that carry a reference to Geosciences Australia. A neat feature of the disclosure log is this: a person can download a summary in PDF or CSV format.
Dear Geoscience Australia,
I haven't heard back from you regarding the broken-link status of the Geoscience Australia Freedom of Information Disclosure Log.
I realise that it's possible that no requests have been made to GA, and thus no log has been created. Could you please confirm whether this is the case?
Yours faithfully,
Dan Monceaux
Locutus Sum left an annotation ()
I wrote an email to Geoscience Australia using their contact page. The two links on the page http://www.ga.gov.au/ips/foi-disclosure-... have been fixed.
Sent request to Geoscience Australia again, using a new contact address.
Ben Fairless left an annotation ()
Looks like we had an old email address for the FOI team, but the email was still accepted. Quite odd.
I've updated the address and resent all requests.
Dan Monceaux left an annotation ()
Thanks for your attention to this Locutus, Ben.
It appears that the link now redirects to the FoI disclosure log for the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science.
A good outcome.
Dear Geoscience Australia,
I have been informed that the previously broken link to the Geoscience Australia FoI Disclosure Log now redirects to the appropriate Department's general FoI Disclosure Log.
As such, please disregard any previous correspondence received from this address regarding its status. Thank you for addressing this problem.
Yours sincerely,
Dan Monceaux
Locutus Sum left an annotation ()
Mr Monceaux, there is of course nothing wrong with you asking for confirmation from Geosciences Australia to tell you that they received your email, but you are probably being a little hasty. The Right to Know site already confirms (in the right-handed top side of the original application) that the email was delivered, so you can be sure the technology worked. But of course you would also like to know that they read the email and will deal with it. You might not know that the Freedom of Information Act requires an agency to acknowledge receipt of applications but also, it allows an agency a little more time that your second email suggests. Section 15(5) of the Freedom of says: "On receiving a request, the agency or Minister must: (a) as soon as practicable but in any case not later than 14 days after the day on which the request is received by or on behalf of the agency or Minister, take all reasonable steps to enable the applicant to be notified that the request has been received." Many agencies use all the 14 days allowed, even though a person would think that it was practicable to give an acknowledgment sooner than this.