Dear Services Australia,

I request, under the Freedom of Information Act 1982, copies of the following documents:

All documents contained within the files on your "Operational Blueprint" portal:

Optical surveillance 110-11040000 ( http://operational.humanservices.gov.au/... )
Requesting referral for optical surveillance 110-11040010 (http://operational.humanservices.gov.au/...
Referring a case to a provider for optical surveillance 110-11040020 (http://operational.humanservices.gov.au/... )
Optical surveillance report received from provider 110-11040030 ( http://operational.humanservices.gov.au/... )

This includes all tabs on each page.

Should there be any charges - please break down the estimated processing time on each of the pages - including the total of ALL decision making time.

The method of delivery of any documents preferred would be their publishing in unaltered, or redacted state upon the online Operational Blueprint portal available to the public. If you require any other method please advise with reasons why it must be this method.

In the interests of speediness, I am willing to consider Administrative Access to said documents should the document be provided within 30 days of the sending of this email. After this time - the FOI act applies as normal in all instances.

Yours faithfully,
Posty

Dear Alexandra,

I contend that all charges for search and retrieval are incorrectly assessed and should not be imposed at all.

Firstly, I have provided the exact pages and object identification numbers from your own public version of the portal to correctly identify and *retrieve* ALL the documents - you appear to have identified them (quite quickly in fact, same day service even!). Search and retrieval exists purely to *find the documents*, not any decision time (which you appear to contend that the standard included five hours covers). You appear to have found them all already. These are not physical files, once identified there's no need to *retrieve* them, they exist on a computer server, i suspect ready to be published at a moments notice by someone with enough access to untick the "possibly FOI exempt" value. A tick of a box if you may. I am not asking them to be collated in another format, just posted where they are, but not currently visible.

Second, the guiding principle 4.4 regarding charges for access:

https://www.oaic.gov.au/freedom-of-infor...

"Agencies and ministers should interpret the ‘lowest reasonable cost’ objective broadly in imposing any charge under the FOI Act. That is, an agency or minister should have regard to the lowest reasonable cost to the applicant, to the agency or minister, and the Commonwealth as a whole. Where the cost of calculating and collecting a charge might exceed the cost to the agency of processing the request, it may generally be more appropriate not to impose a charge.[2] In assessing the cost of calculating and collecting a charge, agencies should also take into account the likely costs that may be incurred by the agency, as well as other review bodies, if the applicant seeks further review."

I suggest you have a look at my history with the Department of Human Services on right to know ( https://www.righttoknow.org.au/user/posty or LEX 37804 for one if you want to check internally). I have disputed literally every single charge you have sought to impose on multiple cases, with OAIC agreeing with me every time. Because these charges are a waste of taxpayer money and time - even the time for you reading this very sentence is time wasted instead of you supplying documents we should have access to.

I am telling you now, I *will seek external review* if you reject my request for waiver of charge.

I *will* request internal review before doing so, just as I have done every time, which you will *always* affirm with your preliminary judgement of charges to stay in place - to highlight precisely how anti-disclosure DHS/SA management is. the last charge was $14.55

I assure you, that if you affirm the charge, this will not entail the lowest reasonable cost objective whatsoever. You will waste your time. You will waste your managers time, you will waste my time and you will waste our very poorly staffed and hugely underresourced Office of the Information Commissioners time.

I don't mean to sound like an arsehole here but I've really been around the bush with you lot before and I just want to hurry up this song and dance and get on with it.

*Please*.

If you actually would like to improve SA's reputation in the public, I will trumpet from the rooftops to all and sundry that things are improving should you waive the charge.

Yours sincerely,

Posty

Dear Alexandra,

Thank you for correctly exercising your discretion. I hope this is the start of a more sensible Services Australia FOI department.

For the record, I am actually unemployed at the moment (including when lodged), so this does help me in this regard - but it is not the grounds i wanted this waived under.

I promised I would tell all and sundry should you waive it, and I have on twitter.

https://twitter.com/posty/status/1323409...

as of writing, over 3500 people have seen this tweet, so you are helping to improve SA's reputation.

I sincerely hope more interactions are like this for myself and others, ideally without the initial need for me to proverbially open a verbal can upon the department. please reconsider the need to even list the 'search and retrieval' for such small requests in future.

Thankyou <3 - i await your 26th November decision with antici

pation.

Yours sincerely,

Posty

Dear Alexandra,

Could you please re-save and re-send this pdf, adobe reader is reporting it is damaged.

Yours sincerely,

Posty

Dear Alexandra,

Sigh. all that trouble and you just refused it outright, we went so well RE the charges.

I don't believe literally the entire documents would be unable to be released.

try again.

I'd like an internal review please.

Merry Christmas.

Yours sincerely,

Posty