Our reference: FOI 24/25-1089
28 February 2025
Elias
By email: foi+request-12716-2aa153f0@righttoknow.org.au
Dear Elias
Freedom of Information request — Request consultation process
Thank you for your correspondence of 12 January 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:
All current internal knowledge articles, standard operating procedures, checklists, and templates pertaining to:
‘Escalation and Prioritisation Matrix’
‘Risk assessment task’
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
After reviewing your request, I have concluded that searches required to compile all documents relevant to the scope of your request would require me to go to every business area within the agency. This is because you have asked for a general document category without specifying a topic for the documents you are seeking.
The agency in its current form has over 120 Branches/Divisions with each of these having multiple teams that potentially have escalation and prioritisation matrixes or risk assessment documents. On a reasonable estimate, the time that it would take to consult with all of these areas, have them conduct searches, and respond back with documents relevant to the scope of your request would take an FOI Officer over 20 hours, and would take business areas a combined total of over 120 hours.
I note that any documents located from these searches would then need to be reviewed for any sensitivities and possible exemption under the FOI Act and scheduled, we will need to consider any consultations and carry these out if required, a decision will need to be made on each document, and a decision letter prepared. This will significantly increase the hours that it will take an FOI officer to process your request.
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:
• Providing a topic for the documents you are requesting (e.g. Escalation and Prioritisation Matrixes and Risk Assessment Tasks surrounding Freedom of Information Applications).
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 Complaints Management & FOI Branch General Counsel Division National Disability Insurance Agency GPO Box 700 CANBERRA ACT 2601
If you do not contact me within this period, I will progress to provide you a decision refusing access to the information you have requested on the basis that that searches required would constitute an unreasonable diversion of resources.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
Yours sincerely
Patrick (PHO293) Senior Freedom of Information Officer Complaints Management & FOI Branch General Counsel Division