Our reference: [LEXD 1341] FOI 25/26-0063, [LEXD 1345] FOI 25/26-0064, [LEXD 1352]
FOI 25/26-0065, [LEXD 1362] FOI 25/26-0066
6 August 2025
David Wright
By email: foi+request-13387-13ebe3d8@righttoknow.org.au,
foi+request-13385-7e9db4d0@righttoknow.org.au,
foi+request-13386-c38d2bda@righttoknow.org.au,
foi+request-13388-bebeb6be@righttoknow.org.au
Dear David Wright
Freedom of Information request — Request consultation process
Thank you for your 4 pieces of correspondence received on 8 July 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).
These 4 requests are being treated as one request for the purpose of section 24(2) of the
FOI Act. This means you only have to respond to this letter once, to negotiate the scope of
all your requests at the same time.
Scope of your request
These 4 requests have been grouped together because they all related to the same subject
matter. They are all seeking entries contained in the NDIA’s LEX system that reference 4
independent medical experts by name.
You have requested access to the following documents:
[LEXD 1341] FOI 25/26-0063
“…In several proceedings before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT)/Administrative
Review Tribunal (ART), the NDIA has engaged Micheal Sandbank to act as an Independent
Medical Expert (IME)/Independent Expert Clinician (ICE). Usually this is to prepare an
Independent Medical Examination/report for the proceeding, and also sometimes to appear
as an expert witness at a hearing.
I request all entries contained in the NDIA’s LEX database which reference ‘Sandbank’.
Please provide me with a complete record of all such LEX database entries, containing all
entered fields, in Microsoft Excel format.”
[LEXD 1345] FOI 25/26-0064
“…In several proceedings before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT)/Administrative
Review Tribunal (ART), the NDIA has engaged David Pincus to act as an Independent
Medical Expert (IME)/Independent Expert Clinician (ICE). Usually this is to prepare an
Independent Medical Examination/report for the proceeding, and also sometimes to appear
as an expert witness at a hearing.
I request all entries contained in the NDIA’s LEX database which reference ‘Pincus’.
Please provide me with a complete record of all such LEX database entries, containing all
entered fields, in Microsoft Excel format.”
[LEXD 1352] FOI 25/26-0065
“…In several proceedings before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT)/Administrative
Review Tribunal (ART), the NDIA has engaged Kenneth Maclean to act as an Independent
Medical Expert (IME)/Independent Expert Clinician (ICE). Usually this is to prepare an
Independent Medical Examination/report for the proceeding, and also sometimes to appear
as an expert witness at a hearing.
I request all entries contained in the NDIA’s LEX database which reference ‘Maclean’.
Please provide me with a complete record of all such LEX database entries, containing all
entered fields, in Microsoft Excel format.”
[LEXD 1362] FOI 25/26-0066
“…In several proceedings before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT)/Administrative
Review Tribunal (ART), the NDIA has engaged Michael McDowell to act as an Independent
Medical Expert (IME)/Independent Expert Clinician (ICE). Usually this is to prepare an
Independent Medical Examination/report for the proceeding, and also sometimes to appear
as an expert witness at a hearing.
I request all entries contained in the NDIA’s LEX database which reference ‘McDowell’.
Please provide me with a complete record of all such LEX database entries, containing all
entered fields, in Microsoft Excel format.”
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.
I am also 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 size. This is also 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
We have consulted with relevant NDIA staff who could be expected to be able to identify
documents within the scope of the request, including staff who are knowledgeable about
how to conduct searches of the NDIA’s LEX systems. Those searches indicate that the NDIA
unable to locate documents that may be relevant to your request. This outcome shows that
the terms of your request do not provide sufficient information to allow us to identify the
specific documents that you are seeking.
This is because the NDIA’s LEX system is not a “database” that can be exported into an
Excel spreadsheet. LEX a matter management software that contains numerous linked
documents, records and notes in the form of emails, attachments, file notes, references to
legislative acts, staff reminders, timesheet entries, invoices, and more. You can read more
about what LEX is on the company’s website: [LEX - Lex Australia - software for in-house
lawyers and contract managers](https://www.lex.com.au/)
The wording of your request does not provide sufficient information for me to understand
what LEX records specifically you are seeking access to. As such, you have not provided
sufficient detail for me to identify the documents you want to access.
In addition, the NDIA doesn’t operate a single LEX system; it has multiple LEX systems.
Each LEX system is designed for use in a particular sub-team within the NDIA. Each LEX
system potentially has tens of thousands of main records. Each main record is potentially
linked to hundreds of file notes, attachments, reminders and other documents. You have not
specified which version of LEX you wish us to search. Therefore, my interpretation is that
you wish me to search all versions of LEX, which encompasses hundreds of thousands – or
potentially millions - of documents.
If we were to search all LEX systems for all records of any kind, created within any date
range, using the keywords you have provided, I estimate there would be tens of thousands
of hits. Most of these hits would be false positives, as your keywords are simply surnames.
These surnames will be shared by numerous other people – including NDIS participants and
NDIA staff members.
These hits will not be in the form of “entries,” as you have suggested. They will be in the
form of documents which may be many pages in length and may take the form of personal
emails, medical reports, assessments, and other highly sensitive materials. You do not have
the authority to access the personal information of other people involved with the NDIS.
On my reasonable estimate, I consider that there is more than 10,000 pages worth of
material that falls within the scope of your request as currently worded. At a conservative
estimate of 1 minute per page, this would take an FOI officer more than 166 hours to simply
review and collate the documents.
The documents that are assessed as being within scope of the request will then need to be
reviewed for sensitivities and possible exemption under the FOI Act and scheduled. As I
have already mentioned, it is highly likely that numerous documents will contain sensitive
personal material that is exempt from disclosure under the FOI Act. AS such, each
document will need to be redacted on a line-by-line basis to obscure the information that is
exempt from disclosure.
In addition, you have requested that the information is provided to you in the form of an
Excel document. This re-formatting will be time-consuming and depend on cumbersome
manually process. It will involve combining thousands of records of varying lengths, all in
different file types, extracted separately from numerous different LEX systems. This re-
formatting will also increase the length of time it will take to process your request.
Moreover, the material will likely contain the information of multiple affected third parties. We
have an obligation under the FOI Act to consult with each affected third party before
releasing information that affects them. As such, we will need to consider all required
consultations and carry these out.
Furthermore, a decision will need to be made on each document in turn, and a decision
letter prepared. This will significantly increase the hours that it will take an FOI officer to
process your request. It is my estimate that it will require over 300 hours to process your
request, as it is currently worded.
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.
In this context, revising your request means both narrowing the scope of the request to make
it more manageable and 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:
• Including a date range, such as 1 January 2025 to 8 July 2025 (the date of your request)
• Specifying which version of LEX you wish to search.
• Specifying whether you wish us to search only main matter records on LEX, or to also search other documents and notes attached to those main records. If you wish us to search linked attachments, please specify what kind.
• Using more descriptive keywords, such as full names: “Kenneth Maclean” or “Michael McDowell” or “David Pincus” or “Michael Sandbank.” This will reduce the number of false positives in the search results.
• Specifically stating that you do not wish to access the personal information of any NDIS participants or NDIA staff members. Specifically stating that if other people’s personal information appears within searches, you agree for it to be redacted on the grounds of personal privacy.
• Removing your stipulations on the format you wish to access these documents in.
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.
Please note that the time taken to consult with you regarding the scope of your request is not
taken into account for the purposes of the timeframe for processing your request.
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 BranchReviews and Information Release Division
National Disability Insurance AgencyGPO Box 700
CANBERRA ACT 2601
If you do not contact me within this period, that is by 20 August 2025, your FOI request will
be taken to have been withdrawn under subsection 24AB(7) and will not be dealt with any
further.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or require help.
Yours sincerely
Laura
Laura LDP633
Assistant Director
Information Release, Privacy and Legal Operations Branch
Reviews and Information Release Division