Dear Department of Human Services,

I request a copy of the Non Employment Income Data Matching (NEIDM) project's program protocol that is mentioned in the Commonwealth Gazette dated August 2016. I quote:

The Australian Government Department of Human Services

NOTICE OF A DATA MATCHING PROJECT

The Non Employment Income Data Matching (NEIDM) project is a data matching process which will enable the Department of Human Services (department) to match income data it collects from customers with tax return related data reported to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). The Taxation Administration Act 1953 authorises the ATO to provide relevant data to the department.

The NEIDM project will assist the department to identify social welfare recipients who may not have disclosed income and assets to the department. Data received from the ATO will be electronically matched with certain departmental records to identify non-compliance with income or other reporting obligations.

The department expects to match each of the approximately 7 million unique records held in its Centrelink database. Based on non-compliance criteria, the department anticipates it will examine approximately 20,000 records in the first phase of the project.

The department will use customers’ information in the context of the NEIDM project to:
- verify the information reported to it by customers;
- identify social welfare recipients who may not have disclosed income to the department;
- match and validate the Tax Return and the Pay As You Go data sets;
- identify discrepancies in the income declared to the department by the customer; and
- consider whether the department will initiate relevant compliance action in relation to a particular customer (including debt recovery or a referral to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions).

The class of people who may be affected by the NEIDM project will include welfare recipients who have lodged a Tax Return with the ATO during 2011 to 2014.

The department’s NEIDM project has been informed by the Office of the Australian Commissioner’s Guidelines on Data Matching in Australian Government Administration. Those Guidelines include standards for data matching activities to protect the privacy of individuals. The department has prepared a program protocol which describes the NEIDM project, in accordance with those Guidelines. Copies of the protocol are available from:

Case Selection Section
Level 2
Louisa Lawson Building
25 Cowlishaw Street
Greenway ACT 2900

Yours faithfully,

Justin Warren

Dear FOI.LEGAL.TEAM,

This is a curious response.

A notice of this data matching project was published in the Gazette (https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C...) and the notice very clearly states that a copy of this protocol is available from a physical Department building.

This strongly suggests that this protocol is available to a member of the public if they were to physically attend the site.

Are you suggesting that if a person were to physically arrive at
Case Selection Section
Level 2
Louisa Lawson Building
25 Cowlishaw Street
Greenway ACT 2900

that they would need to wait 30 days while you consult with third parties?

Why was the offer to provide a copy of the protocol made in the Gazette if it possibly contains information that should not be available to the general public?

I note that the ATO publish their data matching protocols online: https://www.ato.gov.au/General/Gen/Data-... which is in accordance with the OAIC guidelines on data matching protocols: https://www.oaic.gov.au/agencies-and-org...

Does DHS not follow these guidelines?

Yours sincerely,

Justin Warren

Dear FOI.LEGAL.TEAM,

Your response to this Freedom of Information request is now overdue.

Yours sincerely,

Justin Warren

Dear Department of Human Services,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Department of Human Services's handling of my FOI request 'Non Employment Income Data Matching (NEIDM) Project program protocol'.

This document was supposedly publicly available, according to a notice published in the Government Gazette. And yet the Department said it needed to consult with third parties about providing access to this allegedly publicly available document.

I want to know:

- Why was a notice placed in the Government Gazette alleging this document was publicly available if it was not?
- Why did the Department need to consult with third parties over a document that was allegedly publicly available?
- Why did the Department fail to provide a decision within the timeframe specified by the FOI Act? This created a deemed refused decision.
- Is the document publicly available, or not?
- If not, why not?

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/n...

Yours faithfully,

Justin Warren