Freedom of Information request — Request consultation process

Thank you for your correspondence of 29 August 2024, in which you requested access under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act) to documents held by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA).

Scope of your request

You have requested access to the following documents:

“Could you please provide information on the outcome of reports for services requested by OT’s and other allied health providers for PWD when presented in functional Assessment reports.”

Practical refusal

I am authorised to make decisions under section 23(1) of the FOI Act.

I am writing to advise that your request does not provide enough information about the documents you are seeking as is reasonably necessary to allow us to identify them. This is called a ‘practical refusal reason’ under section 24AA of the FOI Act.

On this basis, I intend to refuse your request. However, before I make a final decision, I am writing to provide you with an opportunity to revise your request. This is called a ‘request consultation process’ as set out under section 24AB of the FOI Act. You have 14 days to respond to this notice in one of the ways set out below.

Why I intend to refuse your request

Your request does not satisfy section 15(2)(b) of the FOI Act, as the terms of your request are not identifiable, and we are unable to identify the specific documents sought. We seek further information from you about the documents you are requesting access to.

Specifically, we require clarity about:

What you mean when you have requested ‘…outcome of reports for services requested by OT’s and other allied health providers…’.
What ‘other allied health providers’ you are referring to.

Please note that searches of functional assessment reports would likely require searches of individual participants NDIS file, which would breach those participant’s privacy unless you provided consent, and would amount to a task that would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the NDIA from our operations.

Request consultation process

You now have an opportunity to revise your request to enable it to proceed.

Revising your request can mean narrowing the scope of the request to make it more manageable or explaining in more detail the documents you wish to access. For example, by providing more specific information about exactly what documents you are interested in, the NDIA will be able to pinpoint the documents more quickly and avoid using excessive resources to process documents you are not interested in.