Our reference: FOI 24/25-1473
16 April 2025
Me Right to Know
By email: foi+request-12892-769b517c@righttoknow.org.au
Dear Me
Freedom of Information request — Request consultation process
Thank you for your correspondence of 7 March 2025, 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:
...I would like a copy of all guidance and/or reference documents that would be available to me if I were an NDIA employee assessing an application to become an NDIS participant, excluding publicly available documents.I agree to the exclusion of non-SES contact details and applicant/participant personal information…`
Practical refusal
I am authorised to make decisions under section 23(1) of the FOI Act.
I am writing to advise that the work involved in processing your request in its current form would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the NDIA from its other operations due to its broad scope. 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
I have reviewed the scope of your request, and believe it is too broad to process in its current form. I have consulted with the Service Design Division and Scheme Eligibility Branch regarding the scope. Service Design have provided some documents they believe fall within the scope of your request.
Scheme Eligibility stated that they would hold documents, but the current scope is too broad, and that given the role of their Branch is eligibility to the NDIS, all documents owned by them would likely fall within the scope of the request.
I also believe other areas of the Agency would likely hold documents relevant to the scope of your request, however given I satisfied that the scope is too broad I have not consulted with those areas on your current scope.
As a result, I am of the view that the work involved in the processing of this request would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the NDIA from its other 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.
To reduce the scope of your request, you might like to consider doing the following:
- Limiting the request to documents created during a specific timeframe
- Limit the request to only a specific area within the agency, for example Scheme Eligibility
- Provide more specifics on the types of documents you are requesting, guidance and reference documents are broad terms
- Provide details on what phase of the eligibility process you are seeking documents for
You have 14 days from the date you receive this letter to contact me and do one of the following:
a. withdraw your request
b. make a revised request
c. indicate that you do not wish to revise the request.
During this period, you are welcome to seek assistance to revise your request. If you revise your request in a way that adequately addresses the practical refusal reason outlined above, we will recommence processing it.
You can contact me by email at foi@ndis.gov.au.
Alternatively, you can reply in writing to the following address:
Freedom of Information Section Information Release, Privacy and Legal Operations Branch Reviews and Information Release Division National Disability Insurance Agency GPO Box 700 CANBERRA ACT 2601
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
Yours sincerely
Patrick (PHO293) Senior Freedom of Information Officer Information Release, Privacy and Legal Operations Branch Reviews and Information Release Division