Reporting of CN3174232
Hello,
Please consider this a request under the FOI Act.
Can you please provide any correspondence with the minister's office on reporting of the contract with identifier CN3174232.
Yours faithfully,
Jackson Gothe-Snape
Thank you for your email.
The Department of Employment's national office is closed on Monday 13
March 2017 due to a public holiday.
Your correspondence will be considered and actioned when we re-open on
Tuesday 14 March 2017.
Notice:
The information contained in this email message and any attached files may
be confidential information, and may also be the subject of legal
professional privilege. If you are not the intended recipient any use,
disclosure or copying of this email is unauthorised. If you received this
email in error, please notify the sender by contacting the department's
switchboard on 13 33 97 during business hours (8am - 5pm Local time) and
delete all copies of this transmission together with any attachments.
Good afternoon Mr Gothe-Snape
I refer to your correspondence received by the Department of Employment
(the Department) on 13 March 2017 (below) in which you requested access
under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth) (FOI Act) to the following
documents:
…any correspondence with the minister's office on reporting of the
contract with identifier CN3174232.
The Department will advise you if a charge is payable to process your
request and the amount of any such charge as soon as practicable. Should a
charge be imposed, you will have an opportunity to make submissions that
the charge should be waived.
Please note that information released under the FOI Act may be published
in a disclosure log on the Department’s website. Section 11C of the FOI
Act requires this publication, however it is subject to certain
exceptions, including where publication of personal, business,
professional or commercial information would be unreasonable.
Should you have any queries about this matter, please do not hesitate to
contact me via email: [1][email address].
Yours sincerely
James Ramsay
Information Law Team
Information Law, Practice Management and Corporate Advising Branch
Australian Government Department of Employment
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Good afternoon Mr Gothe-Snape
I refer to your request, dated 13 March 2017, to the Department of
Employment (the Department) under the Freedom of Information Act 1982
(Cth), seeking access to the following:
…any correspondence with the minister's office on reporting of the
contract with identifier CN3174232.
It would assist us with processing your request if you could provide some
clarification of the documents you are seeking.
Based on your previous requests, it seems that you may be seeking access
to documents in which the grant of the contract was reported to the
Minister at the end of the tender process. However, the scope of your
request as currently phrased seems broader than that.
In order for the Department to meet its statutory timeframes, we would
appreciate it if you could clarify the scope of your request by 5PM Monday
3 April 2017.
It would also be appreciated if you could provide a phone number for us to
contact you on. Alternatively, you may contact the Information Law Team on
(02) 6240 7310.
Kind regards
James
James Ramsay
Information Law Team
Information Law, Practice Management and Corporate Advising Branch
Australian Government Department of Employment
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Hi James,
Thanks for getting back to me.
To use your language, I seek documents in which the grant of the contract was reported to the
Minister at the end of the tender process and any correspondence around the outcome of the grant.
Yours sincerely,
Jackson Gothe-Snape
6270 0087
Good afternoon Mr Gothe-Snape
Please find attached charge notice in relation to your request under the
Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth).
Kind regards
James
James Ramsay
Information Law Team
Information Law, Practice Management and Corporate Advising Branch
Australian Government Department of Employment
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Hi James,
Thanks for providing this.
Just to clarify - does this include only correspondence with the Minister's office? 9 documents seems a lot to me.
Yours sincerely,
Jackson Gothe-Snape
Good morning Mr Gothe-Snape
Thank you for your email.
To answer your question, your request captures a number of items of
correspondence which include a number of attachments, and the attachments
count as separate documents for the purpose of counting the number of
documents within the scope of your request. The attachments are referred
to in the correspondence and, in our view, relate closely enough to the
subject matter of the correspondence as to fall within the scope of your
request.
Happy to discuss further.
Kind regards
James
James Ramsay
Information Law Team
Information Law, Practice Management and Corporate Advising Branch
Australian Government Department of Employment
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Thanks James.
Can you please exclude the attachments from the request.
Yours sincerely,
Jackson Gothe-Snape
Good afternoon Mr Gothe-Snape
Please see attached charge notice under the Freedom of Information Act
1982 (Cth).
Kind regards
James Ramsay
Information Law Team
Information Law, Practice Management and Corporate Advising Branch
Australian Government Department of Employment
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Hello,
Can I please contend that the charge has been wrongly assessed.
The search and retrieval time has been estimated at 10.5 hours.
I have made two requests on this topic, and I submit that some of the search and retrieval for this request has already been carried out as part of the charge estimation process for my separate request lodged on January 31, 2017.
I therefore submit that preliminary search and retrieval time carried out as part of the estimate of charges for the previous, abandoned request has been wrongly associated with this request.
To support this contention, I suggest that some documents covered by the current request had been identified in the process of estimating the search and retrieval time for the previous request.
Can I also please contend that any charges that are assessed be not imposed. This request concerns a large government tender and the efficient allocation of government resources around such tenders is in the general public interest. Releasing these documents will contribute to a finding of whether or not resources have been efficiently allocated, and such a finding can only be made by the public.
Yours sincerely,
Jackson Gothe-Snape
Good afternoon Mr Gothe-Snape
Please see attached the Department’s response to your request for waiver
of charges under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth), dated 15 May
2017.
Kind regards
James
James Ramsay
Information Law Team
Information Law, Practice Management and Corporate Advising Branch
Australian Government Department of Employment
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Good morning Mr Gothe-Snape
Please find attached the decision in relation to your request, dated 13
March 2017, under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth), and relevant
documents.
Kind regards
James
James Ramsay
Information Law Team
Information Law, Practice Management and Corporate Advising Branch
Australian Government Department of Employment
Notice:
The information contained in this email message and any attached files may
be confidential information, and may also be the subject of legal
professional privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, any use,
disclosure or copying of this email is unauthorised. If you received this
email in error, please notify the sender by contacting the department's
switchboard on 1300 488 064 during business hours (8:30am - 5pm Local
time) and delete all copies of this transmission together with any
attachments.
Locutus Sum left an annotation ()
The applicant incorrectly marked this request as if it were awaiting an internal review. That was not correct. Internal review has a specific meaning under the FOI Act and it was not an internal review that the applicant requested. Instead, the applicant made a contention that an assessed charge was incorrect. The agency has now decided to waive the charge. Soon (we must remain hopeful), the agency will make a formal decision on the request. So the request is actually awaiting an original decision, not an internal review decision ... but there is no possibility now to mark the request "No decision has yet been made."