To: The FOI Contact Officer
Department of Industry ... and Tertiary Education

Dear FOI Contact Officer,

On your department's web-site, http://minister.innovation.gov.au/sharon... , you have a speech the Minister for Higher Education and Skills (The Hon Sharon Bird MP) recently made. The speech is called "Address to the National Equity in Higher Education Poliicy Forum". The web page says the minister gave the speech on April 30th. In the speech, she says that it was at Sydney University. I request documents (details below) in regards to the forum.

PROVIDED THAT you can give me the documents within 30 calendar days of receipt of this application, please treat this as a request for access under the Administrative Access Scheme that the Australian Information Commissioner suggests each agency should establish. If you can not deal with this request in that way, or if in regards to any particular document it is not possible to meet the request within 30 days, then please treat the request, in regards to the document that cannot be provided within 30 days, as a formal application for the document under the Freedom of Information Act with the date of request as the date you receive this email

Please interpret "document" to mean "documents" where necessary or appropriate (for reasons, see http://bit.ly/Yu3jzG ) and to include electronic documents as appropriate. Please interpret "apply" "application", "request" as the same..

Documents I request:
--------------------------
1. I would like a copy of the agenda for the conference.
2. If forum attendees got an "attendee package" (or whatever it was reallly called) from the department , I would like a copy of each document in the package.
3. I request a copy of any presentations (Power Point slides etc.) that attendees got shown.
4. I request a copy of any briefing the department gave to the minister for the speech at the forum.
5. Documents regarding the cost charged for attendee registration.

The documents in 1, 2 and 3 were obviously made public at the forum or before. Only 4 looks like it might have to be a formal FOI request.

Thank you.

P. Gale (Mrs)

May 14th, 2013.

Dear FOI officer,

Thank you for your correspondence of May 28th, 2013. I am a little confused about your response. My original email makes it quite clear that it is not a formal request under the FOI Act, and that it would only become such a request if you cannot provide me with the documents requested within 30 days. Given that's the case, I don't feel I need to withdraw or modify the request at this stage. If you cannot provide me with the documents (the majority of which must of necessity have already been made public!) within 30 days of my original email, then it will become a formal FOI request.

In regards to item 4 of my request ("I request a copy of any briefing the department gave to the minister for the speech at the forum") I am happy to discuss the request with you but I prefer to do so by email. One of the advantages of the www.righttoknow.org.au website is that it lets other people to see the nature and progress of FOI requests and maintains a public record of requests. I can appreciate the advantages of a discussion by telephone but it would interrupt the openness the righttoknow.org.au strives for.

Perhaps you could let me know what it is you would like to discuss, or ask me your questions?

At the risk of being wrong, I assume that you are looking for clarification of the scope of my item 4, in which case I can add the following. I limit my request to briefing notes that were provided for the minister (a) no earlier than 21 days preceding the forum (ie: on or after Monday, April 8th 2013) and (b) with the intention of preparing the minister for questions that she might have been expected to receive from attendees at the forum. If more than one such document exists, perhaps you could briefly describe their nature. If no documents exist, please let me know, and then consider my request in item 4 to be withdrawn.

Finally, if you decide to treat any part of my original request as a formal FOI request, I will accept your email of May 28th, 2013 as being the formal notice required by s 15(5)(a). Before I sent my request, I'd looked at a similar request (by Mr Peter Timmins) on http://righttoknow.org.au but I had no idea that mixing a request for administrative access with an FOI request could get so messy!

Thank you.

P. Gale (Mrs)

May 28th, 2013.

To: The FOI Contact Officer
Department of Industry ... and Tertiary Education

Dear FOI Contact Officer,

In regards my request for documents about the Address to the National Equity in Higher Education Policy Forum.

You wrote me last week and said, "We would like to discuss item 4 of your request with you." In my reply, I said I thought you may want me to clarify the scope of my request. Was that what you wanted me to do? Was the clarification I included in my last email enough or was there another question you had about my request that I did not answer?

Thank you.

P. Gale (Mrs)
June 4th, 2013.

Dear FOI Officer

Thank you for your correspondence of June 5th, 2013. In the letter (https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/i...) you said, "I ... have been advised that all the requested documents will be provided to you outside of the FOI Act." This was pleasing news but there is now a problem. It is because of this problem that I am now writing to you.

In my original request I said, and have since repeated, that I was happy for this to be dealt with under administrative arrangements PROVIDED that I am given the documents within 30 days of the date of my application. The period of 30 days will expire at the end of today, and I have not received anything. Therefore very little time remains for your department to deal with my request under administrative arrangements.

As I said in my original letter (http://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/in...), "if in regards to any particular document it is not possible to meet the request within 30 days, then please treat the request, in regards to the document that cannot be provided within 30 days, as a formal application for the document under the Freedom of Information Act with the date of request as the date you receive this email [ie., May 14th, 2013]".

This means that if I am not sent the documents before tomorrow, then by tomorrow morning my request will have to be understood as having been a formal application under the FOI Act with an application date of May 14th, 2013. This was exactly what I hoped to avoid.

Doubtless the delay to send me the documents is nothing concerned with you personally. I regret that you are in the position of having to sort it out!

Would you like me to agree to an extension of time for handling the formal application? If so, please let me know what time you need.

Thank you.

P.Gale (Mrs)
June 13th, 2013.

Dear FOI Officer

Thank you for your quick reply.

You are correct in saying that your Department had said that it would provide me with the documents I requested and that it would do so outside the FOI Act. That is not at issue. Nor is it at issue whether there is a statutory timeframe to be met. The issue is that I said very specifically and very clearly in my original request (in an attempt to relieve the department of some of the recording obligations under the Act) that PROVIDED the documents were given to me within 30 days then I was willing to have the matter handled under administrative arrangements.

I also said very clearly that, if the department could not provide me with the documents within 30 days of my request then it should be treated as a formal application under the Act. I cannot conceive a way in which a person might state that more clearly.

The problem with an administrative request that did not contain the kind of proviso that I deliberately included in my own letter, is that all the benefit of the administrative arrangements is in favour of the department and none to the benefit of the applicant!

Yet, despite the grave misgivings that I entertain, I agree to the timeframe that you are suggesting for handling my request under administrative arrangements. Furthermore, I abandon/cancel the formal FOI aspect of my original application. If I need to, I will make a separate, formal FOI application in the future.

The unfortunate aspect of this is that a person who reads this correspondence may think twice before considering using administrative access arrangements rather than to rely on the formal mechanisms of the Act.

Sincerely yours.

P.Gale (Mrs)
June 13th, 2013

Dear FOI Officer,

I am writing to inform you of my decision to withdraw my request of May 14th, 2013 for documents in regards to the forum referred to by your department as a “National Equity in Higher Education Poliicy Forum”, held at Sydney University on April 30th, 2013.

In my initial email I offered your department a choice for dealing with the request. I said the department could use administative arrangements if it wanted, but only if it could give me the documents by the close of business on June 13th, 2013. Alternatively the department could treat the matter as a formal request under the F.O.I. Act. Your department made an implicit choice to handle my request under administrative arrangements but then did not deliver the documents by the implicitly agreed date.

Instead, you wrote me June 13th and said you had been advised "the documents should be provided ... no later than Friday 21 June 2013." In spite of very strong misgivings, I agreed to give your department the additional time to use adminsitrative arrangements to give me the requested documents.

Unfortunately, we're now at the very end of "Friday 21 June 2013" and I have not been given the documents. Consequently I withdraw my request of May 14th.

I will made a new, formal request under the Act.

Thank you.

P. Gale (Mrs)
June 21st, 2013.