For the Department of Veterans' Affairs FOI officer,

I seek the following document to be created under s 17 of the Freedom of Information Act from the digital data held by the Department of Veterans‘ Affairs in its intranet, human resource information system and records management system (as is reasonably necessary), to provide the following for each Senior Executive Service employee of the Department (as at today, or nearest date):

A table which provides the following information, for each SES employee:

1) Position Number
2) First Name
3) Last Name
4) Position Title
5) Departmental Branch position exists in
6) Salary Band $ (not actual salary but the salary band as per the current agreement/determination)
7) The DVA Tier One and/or Tier Two Committee Memberships the SES employee has (see page 92 of the DVA Annual Report for 2017-2018 for overview)
8) Who SES Member Directly Reports To
9) Number of Direct Reports to SES Member

The statutory due date for acknowledgment is Monday 24 December 2018

The statutory due date for decision is Monday 7 January 2019

As per the Department’s 2017-18 Annual Report, as at 30 June 2018, there were 22 SES1 employees, 7 SES2 employees, and 1 SES3 employee, along with 5 statutory appointments.

It is unlikely that number has changed substantively, meaning a table with only 35 rows will be required to be produced.

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs has, on being granted extensions of time previously by either myself or the Information Commissioner, has subsequently and repeatedly gone on to then fail to produce any decisions (many now exceeding many months), even after being granted further extension. You should note this, as you have damaged your standing for future extensions as a result, given the repeated bad faith shown.

There is a public interest in identifying the senior executive resource allocation for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, especially given the Department has a 1:53 ratio (1:52.857) for SES to EL&APS grade staff, which is a more top heavy ratio than other Departments (especially when the Department of Veterans‘ Affairs has a ratio that for every three ordinary APS employees, there is an Executive or Senior Executive or Statutory employee), to better understand what this comparatively large number of Senior Executive and Statutory appointments do, and why the Department is less employee resource efficient than other Departments.

Sincerely,

Julie