18 June 2025
Alice S
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
ACMA file reference
ACMA2025/660
Dear Alice S
Notice under section 24AB of the Freedom of Information Act 1982— request consultation process
I refer to your
Freedom of Information Act (FOI Act) request of 20 May 2025 in which you sought access to
“any documents relating to the Rich Communication Services (RCS) protocol. This may include analyses,
research, correspondence, consultancy, or any document referencing Rich Communication Services
protocol or implementation.”
I wrote to you on 29 May 2025 seeking clarification of the scope of your request. In this letter I noted that
my initial consideration of your request indicated there may be a large number of documents which fall
within the scope. I suggested refining your request to assist the ACMA to process your request more
efficiently and reduce the charges which may be imposed for the processing of your request. A response
has not been received.
Request consultation process I am an officer authorised under subsection 23(1) of the FOI Act to make decisions in relation to FOI
requests. Under subsection 24(1) of the FOI Act, if an agency is satisfied, when dealing with a request for a
document, that a practical refusal reason exists in relation to the request, the agency must undertake a
request consultation process and, if after this process the agency is satisfied that the practical refusal
reason still exists, the agency may refuse to give access to the document in accordance with the request.
Under paragraph 24AA(1)(a) of the FOI Act, if the work involved in processing a request would substantially
and unreasonably divert the resources of the ACMA from its operations, the request may be refused (the
practical refusal reason).
The purpose of this letter is to advise you it is my intention to refuse access for this reason (section 24AB of
the FOI Act). Before I make my final decision, you are invited to participate in a request consultation
process, to give you an opportunity to revise the FOI request to remove this ground for refusal, for
example, by narrowing it to make it more manageable and clarifying specific elements. I have set out below
the reasons why I consider the practical refusal reason applies to the FOI request as this may assist you to
revise the scope of your request.
Practical refusal reason
A preliminary search of ACMA systems has been undertaken to identify documents potentially within the
scope of your request. So far, more than 11,700 items have been identified as potentially falling within the
scope of your request. The number of potentially relevant items will likely increase because this initial
search was for a 3 year period (back to May 2022) and went to the search term ‘Rich Communications
Services’ only and did not include a search of all record management systems used by the ACMA.
PO Box 78, Belconnen ACT 2616
xxxx@xxxx.xxx.xx | acma.gov.au
As currently framed, the request is extremely broad and potentially captures any and all documents of the
ACMA for an indeterminate period that relate to ‘Rich Communications Services’ or ‘RCS protocol’ or ‘RCS
protocol implementation’ or ‘Rich Communications Service protocol implementation’ in passing or in
substance.
As there are at least 11,700 items which will need to be considered in response to the FOI request, this
request is likely to involve an extraordinarily large amount of work that would be a substantial and
unreasonable diversion of the limited and critical resources of the ACMA from its other operations,
including, resources dedicated to improving telecommunications consumer outcomes.
The time spent locating, identifying and preparing a schedule of documents relevant to this request will be
significant. However, this represents only a proportion of the time it will take to deal with your request.
Additional time would be needed to:
• determine the final scope of the FOI request
• complete the process of identifying, locating and collating the relevant documents
• examine the documents which may fall within scope
• examine each page to assess relevance
• convert documents to PDF and collate
• undertake third party consultation, as required
• examine each page to decide whether it should be released or subject to an exemption (in whole or
in part)
• redact exempt or irrelevant material/information
• write the decision on access, and
• make copies and otherwise preparing documents for release.
Many of the documents will need to be assessed to determine if they contain information that is exempt
from release under the FOI Act. For example, I have identified in my preliminary search some documents
that appear to contain potentially confidential or commercially sensitive information. Accordingly, I have
assessed the decision-making process (including the likely consideration of several exemptions and public
interest conditional exemptions as part of that process) to be complex and time consuming.
Making a revised request and clarifying the scope of the request
I invite you to make changes to clarify and narrow the scope of your request to enable the ACMA to process
the request. One potential way to revise the FOI request would be to confine it to external correspondence
with the telecommunications sector in respect to Rich Communications Services protocol implementation
since 1 January 2025.
In addition, a further way to reduce the scope of the request would be to consider excluding from the
scope of the request as a whole:
• all personal information, including the personal information of non-SES ACMA staff
• all duplicate documents
• all media articles or articles by subscription services
• all drafts of documents
• individual emails that form part of an email chain – in which case one version of the email chain
containing all emails will be provided.
Also note that seeking access to documents such as all emails and correspondence about a particular
matter would also include within its scope documents that relate to purely administrative matters such as
PO Box 78, Belconnen ACT 2616
xxxx@xxxx.xxx.xx | acma.gov.au
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meeting requests. If you do not want access to such documents, you may wish to also specifically exclude
documents such as meeting requests, and any other categories of documents that you do not want to seek
access to from the scope of the request.
Effect of the notice – request consultation process
Under section 24AB of the FOI Act you now have a period of 14 days commencing from the day after you
receive this notice (the consultation period) to do one of the following in writing:
• withdraw your request
• make a revised request
• indicate that you do not wish to revise your request.
Please note that if you do not contact me or do one of the three things listed above during the 14-day
consultation period, your request will be taken to have been withdrawn.
Please also note that the time taken to undertake this consultation is not taken into account for the
purposes of the 30-day time limit for processing your FOI request. Time for processing will recommence
when you make a revised request or indicate that you do not wish to revise your request.
If you would like assistance to clarify the scope of your request so that the practical refusal reason no
longer exists, you may contact me on (02) 6219 5116 or em
ail xxxxxxxxxx.xxxxx@xxxx.xxx.xx.
Yours sincerely
Bernadette Kelly
Manager, Combating Scams Team
xxxxxxxxxx.xxxxx@xxxx.xxx.xx
(02) 6219 5116
Authorised decision maker pursuant to subsection 23(1) of the FOI Act
PO Box 78, Belconnen ACT 2616
xxxx@xxxx.xxx.xx | acma.gov.au
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