Thank you for your email, which has been forwarded to the Department’s FOI
Team for their consideration. A member of the FOI Team will respond to
your email in the next couple of days.

Kind regards

FOI Coordinator

OFFICIAL

Dear Mr Norwood

Freedom of Information Request – FOI 22-23/051

Thank you for your email to the Department of Finance (Finance) requesting
access to documents under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act):

For a complete copy of the departments' Freedom of Information (FOI) logs
for the period 2013-2023, including any secondary departments controlled
by the agency. 

Conditions: I request that this is provided as a document and not a simple
redirect to the agency website as I am of the view that your online
disclosure logs do not actively reflect your FOI requests that you have
received in this period.

Background information

The FOI Act requires that agencies and ministers must publish details of
information that has been released in response to each FOI access request,
subject to certain exceptions (subsection 11C(6) of the FOI Act). This
publication is known as a ‘disclosure log’. The purpose of the disclosure
log is to make available to the world at large information that has been
released under the FOI Act.

If publication in a disclosure log would be unreasonable, an agency or
minister is not required to publish. Subsection 11C(1) of the FOI Act sets
out that publication is not required in the following circumstances, where
the information in the documents released are exempt:

(a) personal information about any person, if it would be unreasonable to
publish the information;

(b) information about the business, commercial, financial or professional
affairs of any person, if it would be unreasonable to publish the
information;

(c) other information of a kind determined by the Information Commissioner
under subsection (2), if it would be unreasonable to publish the
information;

(d) any information, if it is not reasonably practicable to publish the
information under this section because of the extent of any modifications
to a document (or documents) necessary to delete information mentioned in
paragraphs (a) to (c).

If Finance has determined that an exemption to publication does not apply,
and the document/s released to the applicant are required to be published
on Finance’s disclosure log, then they will be published here:
[1]Disclosure log | Department of Finance

Documents to which one or more of the above exemptions apply do not form
part of the disclosure log.

Request for assistance

While we note you are not seeking to be redirected to the agency website,
Finance’s disclosure log on the website is the only log Finance produces,
as required by the FOI Act.

As set out above, the purpose of the disclosure log is to make available
the documents that have been released under the FOI Act, and not simply
the requests that have been received. For example, where a request has
been made, and the decision maker has made a decision to refuse access to
a document, the request would not be available on the disclosure log.

As Finance does not hold any additional FOI ‘log’ document, we kindly
invite you to withdraw your FOI request. Alternatively, you can:

o revise your request, which can include explaining in more detail the
documents you seek to access; or
o advise us that you seek to proceed with your original request.

Please respond, in writing, by COB Monday 22 May 2023. Please note that if
we do not receive a response from you, we are required under the FOI Act
to expend additional resources to process your request.

We appreciate your assistance in this matter.

General FOI matters

Your request was received by Finance on 06 May 2023. The statutory period
for processing your request commences from the day after Finance received
your request and a decision is due on Monday 05 June 2023.

The processing period may be extended if we need to consult third parties,
impose a charge or for other reasons. We will advise you if this happens.

Liability to pay a charge

You will be notified of any charges in relation to your request as soon as
possible, before we process any requested documents or impose a final
charge.

Policy to exclude junior officer contact details, signatures and mobile
phone numbers

Finance has adopted a policy to generally exclude from any documents
released under FOI, the names and contact details of junior staff (non-SES
officers) and staff employed under the Members of Parliament (Staff) Act
1984 (adviser level and below). Finance has also adopted a policy to
exclude signatures and mobile phone numbers from any documents released
under FOI (unless publicly available). Finance’s preference is to reach
agreement with FOI applicants to exclude these details from the scope of
the request. Where there is no objection, the names and contact details of
junior officers, as well as any signatures and mobile phone numbers
appearing in identified documents, will be redacted under section 22 of
the FOI Act on the basis that these details are irrelevant to the request.

Please contact the FOI Team on the below contact details if you wish to
discuss your request.

Kind regards

FOI Officer | Legal and Assurance Branch

Business Enabling Services

Department of Finance

A: One Canberra Avenue, Forrest ACT 2603

Classification: OFFICIAL

Classified by: [email address] on: 17/05/2023 4:32:10 PM

References

Visible links
1. https://www.finance.gov.au/about-us/free...