Dear Department of Human Services,

Could you please send through all documents, including correspondence, from the last 2 years (March 2015 - March 24 2017) that refer to the payment methods the Department accepts for FOI requesters to pay charges.

Please exclude from the scope all FOI correspondence between requesters and FOI officers. I am only interested in internal documents; and correspondence between department staff, between staff and ministerial staff, and staff and 3rd parties.

Thanks for your help,

Luke Bacon

Hey there,

In your reply today you've written:

> Your request involves too much work for the department
>
> Your request covers a wide range of documents. We are asking you to revise your request to give us more specific details about the information you are after because of the amount of work involved for the department. If you decide not to make any revisions I will have to refuse your FOI request as a 'practical refusal reason' exists.
>
> ...
>
> Before I make a final decision on your request, you can narrow the size of your original request and submit a revised request. You could consider narrowing the time frame for the documents you seek, as well as removing third party information from the scope of your request.

No worries. Let’s amend the scope to:

* narrow the time frame to the last 12 months (March 2016 - March 2017)
* exclude third party information, but still include correspondence with ministerial staff.

Thanks for helping me reduce the scope so we can continue the request.

Warm regards,

Luke Bacon

Hi Jonathon,

By your estimate if I just include the first and final drafts, rather than all drafts, of documents, would that be too great a burden on resources to be processed?

Thanks for your help,

Luke Bacon

Thanks Jonathon,

I think this is a good idea. Please exclude from the scope of this request draft correspondence to be sent to FOI applicants and internal invoicing documents created to record receipt of charges.

Thanks for helping me refine this.

Yours sincerely,

Luke Bacon

Hi Jonathon, thanks for your email.

> The processing time was suspended during a period of consultation under section 24AB.
> As this consultation did occur you can now expect a decision from us by 3 May 2017.
>
> I have taken your revised request to be for the following documents:
>
> 'Could you please send through all documents, including correspondence,
> from the last year (March 2016 - March 24 2017) that refer to the payment methods
> the Department accepts for FOI requesters to pay charges.
>
> Please exclude from the scope all FOI correspondence between requesters and FOI officers.
>
> Exclude third party information, but still include correspondence with ministerial staff.
>
> Please exclude from the scope of this request draft correspondence to be sent to FOI
> applicants and internal invoicing documents created to record receipt of charges.
>
> I am only interested in internal documents; and correspondence between department
> staff, between staff and ministerial staff, and staff and 3rd parties.’

Sounds good to me, let's proceed. Thanks for collating this so clearly :)

All the best,

Luke

Hi there,

Thanks for your notification.

I'd like to apply for reduction of the $414.80 fee on the basis of the strong public interest in transparency of the department’s Freedom of Information process. The method of payment for FOI request charges is an often overlooked but important aspect of the accessibility of the FOI system. Some methods require people to have a credit card, other methods (like money order) require additional fees on top of the FOI charges. These are barriers, potentially reasonable or not, to people making FOI requests. There are important privacy and security considerations that also feed into decisions about payment methods.

The public require access to our documents that refer to FOI payment methods in order to understand and aseess how the department makes decisions about them, so that they can participate in modernising the our public authority’s system.

As additional evidence that this request is intended for public benefit, rather than private or commercial, I've made this request through righttoknow.org.au. All the documents will be immediately public for everyone’s benefit.

Thanks for your consideration,

Luke Bacon

Dear Freedom of Information Team,

Thank you for the detailed consideration and decision. It's very helpful and provides lots of useful information for applicants such as myself. Thank you.

As my response is extremely late please treat this as a withdrawal of the request. I hope to pick it up in a new form at a later date.

Thanks again,

Luke Bacon