  Department reference: FOI 25-0347 LD

  Ray D
By email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx

  Dear Ray D

Freedom of Information Request FOI-25-0347 LD
Notice issued under section 24AB(2) and invitation to engage in a request
consultation process
  I refer to your request of 29 March 2025 to the Department of Health and Aged Care
(the department), seeking access to the following documents under the Freedom of
Information Act 1982 (Cth) (the FOI Act). The scope of your request is as follows:

[A]ny documents and correspondence relating to the Australian Government's decision
to appoint Amplar Health as the sole provider of virtual nursing services as part of the
Aged Care Virtual Nursing Project.
Please do not include duplicates, or publicly available documents and transcripts.
  Power to refuse request
  I am an officer authorised under subsection 23(1) of the FOI Act to make decisions in
relation to FOI requests.
I am writing to notify you that I believe the work involved in processing your request
in its current form would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the
department from its other operations. This constitutes a ‘practical refusal reason’
under section 24AA of the FOI Act.
  I am currently considering refusing your access request on the basis of the practical
refusal reason. However, before I make a final decision on your request, you have an
opportunity to revise your request to remove the practical refusal reason. This is called
a ‘request consultation process’ as per section 24AB of the FOI Act.

GPO Box 9848 Canberra ACT 2601 - www.health.gov.au

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Practical refusal reason
  Section 24AA(1) of the FOI Act provides that a practical refusal reason exists in relation
to a request for a document when either (or both) of the following applies:
(a) the work involved in processing the request would substantially and
unreasonably divert the resources of the agency from its other operations; or
(b) the request does not satisfy the requirement in paragraph 15(2)(b).
My assessment of the section 24AA(1)(a) practical refusal reason is as follows:
Search and retrieval of documents
The department has undertaken preliminary searches for documents in scope of your
request, as per the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s Freedom of
Information Guidelines [at 3.89].
  These searches were undertaken by officers of the department with knowledge of and
responsibility for the subject of your request, having regard to the department’s record
management systems and the age of the documents sought.
  This preliminary search has so far taken the department approximately 11 hours to
identify 508 documents comprising a total of 7,560 pages potentially relevant to your
request.
  Extraction and scheduling of documents
To process your request further, the department would need to extract the
approximately 508 documents from its record management and/or computer systems
and manually review each document to ensure that it falls within scope of your
request.
  On the basis that extraction and conversion of documents to an editable format would
take approximately 1 minute per document, I estimate that the extraction process
would take at least 8.5 hours to complete. Duplicate documents would also be
identified and removed during this process.
  The department would then need to create a schedule of documents in scope of the
request. On the basis that it would take approximately 1 minute per document to enter
the required information into a table, I estimate that the scheduling process would take
approximately 8.5 hours to complete.
  Assessment
  As an officer authorised to make a decision regarding your request, I would then be
required to read and assess each page of each document in scope of your request
against the FOI Act to decide whether to grant, refuse or defer access to the information
in any document in scope of your request.

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If all documents identified as potentially relevant to your request were determined to
be in scope of your request, I would need to review 7,560 pages of material.
On the basis that assessment would take me an average of 3 minutes per page, I
estimate that it would take me 378 hours to make a decision on access to the documents
potentially in scope of your request.
Third party consultation
  The department may need to consult with affected third parties in accordance with the
statutory provisions of section 27/27A the FOI Act.
  A preliminary review of documents potentially in scope of your request indicate that
38 third parties may need to be consulted in relation to your request, as per section
27/27A of the FOI Act.
  On the basis that it would take 1 hour to prepare, send, receive, interpret and apply
correspondence for each of the 38 third parties, I estimate that it would take the
department 38 hours to consult with external third parties, noting that this estimate
may change as further assessment work is undertaken.
Document preparation
  Once I had assessed each of the documents in scope of your request, officers of the
department would then need to prepare the documents in scope of your request by
applying any relevant deletions or exemptions. Assuming this process would take an
average of 2 minutes per page, I estimate that it would take the department 252 hours
to prepare the documents for decision.
The department would also need to prepare a statement of reasons as required by
section 15 the FOI Act. I anticipate it would take an officer of the department
approximately 2 hours to prepare this statement of reasons for my final review and
decision.
  Summary
As outlined above, I estimate that it would take the department at least 698 hours (or
93 business days) to process your request, as summarised below:

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Task
Time (hours)

Search for potentially relevant documents
11
Extraction, preparation, and scheduling of documents
17
Third party consultation
38
Assessment
378
Preparation of documents
252
Preparation of a statement of reasons
2
TOTAL ESTIMATE OF WORK EFFORT

698

  Whether diversion of resources would be substantial and unreasonable
  In considering whether processing your request would constitute substantial and
unreasonable diversion of resources of the department I have considered the following
factors, as suggested by the FOI Guidelines [at 3.117]:

•  the staffing resources available to the department for FOI processing
•  whether the processing work requires the specialist attention of a senior
officer, or can only be undertaken by one or more specialist officers in the
department who have competing responsibilities; and
•  the impact that processing this request may have on other work in the
department, including FOI processing.
In financial year 2023-24, the department had 7,135 staff, 15 of which were allocated to
processing of FOI requests. I consider that processing one access request with an
estimated work effort of 698 hours would represent an unreasonable diversion of
resources as it would:

•  divert 405 hours work effort of myself, an SES Officer, and support staff from
Aged Care Nursing Policy and Programs Section, a core operation of the
department.
•  divert 293 hours work effort from the FOI Section, which is required to respond
to all other on hand FOI requests within statutory timeframes.
I further observe that in VMQD and Commissioner of Taxation (Freedom of information)
[2018] AATA 4619 (17 December 2018) [101] the AAT noted:
What constitutes valid practical refusal grounds is thus agency specific and
resource dependent. Nevertheless for any agency, a burden in excess of 200 hours
would almost certainly make the threshold of a rational and objective test. As is
illustrated above, burdens as (relatively) small as 74 hours have been so
characterised.
  As such, I am satisfied that the work involved in processing your request, as currently
presented, would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the
department from its other operations.

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Request consultation process
  You now have an opportunity to revise your request to enable it to proceed.
  You could revise your request by narrowing the scope of the request and/or providing
greater detail about the documents you wish to access. Providing more specific
information about the format, timeframes, and substance of the documents you are
interested in will enable the department to conduct targeted searches for documents
of interest.
  The request consultation period runs for 14 days and starts on the day after you receive
this notice. Before the end of the consultation period, you must do one of the following,
in writing:
•  withdraw your request
•  make a revised request, or
•  tell us that you do not wish to revise your request.
If you do not do one of the three things listed above during the consultation period,
or you do not consult the contact person during this period, your request will be taken
to have been withdrawn.
  If you agree to revise your request in a way that removes the practical refusal reason
outlined above, the department will recommence processing your request. Please
note: as per section 24AB(8) of the FOI Act the time taken to consult you regarding the
scope of your request is not counted in the statutory timeframe provided for
processing your request.
  Please contact the FOI section on the contact details below if you have any questions
or require assistance responding to the practical refusal notice.
Legislative provisions
  The FOI Act, including the provisions referred to above, are available on the Federal
Register of Legislation website: www.legislation.gov.au/Series/C2004A02562
  Contact officer
  For the purposes of this consultation, the contact officer for your request is:
Tritiya
Phone: (02) 6289 1666
Email:  xxx@xxxxxx.xxx.xx
Yours sincerely

  Lauren Hendriks
A/g Assistant Secretary
Aged Care Workforce Branch
16 April 2025

Document Outline