Our reference: FOI 24/25-2260 [LEXD 885]
GPO Box 700
Canberra ACT 2601
1800 800 110
ndis.gov.au
1 October 2025
Elias
Right to Know
By email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx Dear Elias
Freedom of Information request — Request consultation process
Thank you for your correspondence of 16 June 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 “Risk Assessment” and “Escalation and Prioritisation Matrix” (or
similar) documents (including knowledge articles, standard operating procedures,
guidelines, tables, checklists, forms and templates) held by the:
1. Review Branch (possibly also known as the Internal Review Branch)
2. Scheme Eligibility Branch
3. National Early Childhood Branch
4. Complex Support Needs Branch
5. Participant Safeguarding Response Branch
6. Technical Advice and Practice Improvement Branch
7. Performance, Quality and National Workload Management Branch
Please include all identified documents in full, I consider all parts of a document to be
relevant. This also includes the 'version control' information for every document...”
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link to page 2
Internal Consultation
On the basis of the scope, I initiated preliminary consultations with the following NDIA
business areas:
• Internal Review Branch
• Scheme Eligibility Branch
• National Early Childhood Branch
• Complex Support Needs Branch
• Participant Safeguarding Response Branch
• Technical Advice and Practice Improvement Branch
• Performance, Quality and National Workload Management Branch
In response to the preliminary consultations, these business areas have advised me:
• Due to the broad scope of the request and the number of business areas named in it
a very large number of documents fall within scope. Advice to date suggests that
more than 1200 pages of documents fall within scope.
• The process of identifying and retrieving each document that falls within scope of the
request would take a senior officer from each business area a significant amount of
time to compile the response to the FOI team.
Based on the advice provided, at a conservative estimate of spending two minutes reading
each page, this would take an FOI officer more than 40 hours to simply review and collate
the documents.
I note that the documents that are assessed as being within scope of the request would then
need to be reviewed for any sensitivities and possible exemption under the FOI Act. The FOI
team would also need to consider whether any further consultations were required and carry
these out. A decision about disclosure would need to be made on each document, and a
decision letter prepared. These steps would significantly increase the hours that it would
take for an FOI officer to process your request.
Practical refusal reason
As a result of the preliminary consultation, I am satisfied that the work involved in processing
the request in its current form would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of
the Agency from its other operations
.1 I therefore intend to refuse your request on the basis of a ‘practical refusal reason’ under
section 24AA of the FOI Act. A practical refusal reason exists if either (or both) of the
following applies:
a) the work involved in the processing of the request would substantially and
unreasonably divert the resources of the Agency from its other operations; and/or
1 Section 24AA of the FOI Act.
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link to page 3
b) the request does not satisfy the requirement in section 15(2)(b) of the FOI Act, which
requires an FOI applicant to provide such information concerning the document/s
they are seeking access to, to enable the Agency to be able to identify it or them.
In reaching this view, I have taken account of the advice set out above.
However, before I make a final decision, I am writing to provide you with an opportunity to
revise your reques
t.2 This is called a ‘request consultation process’ as set out under section
24AB of the FOI Act.
I am authorised to make this decision under section 23(1) of the FOI Act.
Request consultation process
In circumstances where an Agency is considering a practical refusal, it is required to
undertake a request consultation process under section 24AB of the FOI Act. The purpose of
this letter is to initiate that process. You now have 14 days to do one of the following:
• withdraw your request;
• make a revised request; or
• indicate that you do not wish to revise the request (in which case the current scope of
your request will stand).
If you do not do one of the three things listed above during the consultation period, your
request will be processed on the basis of the current scope, and it is likely to be refused on
the basis that processing it would represent a substantial and unreasonable diversion of the
Agency’s resources.
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.
To assist you in reducing the scope of your request, you may wish to consider revising your
request to seeking only one type of document e.g. knowledge articles or standard operating
procedures.
I note that the NDIS FOI Disclosure Log has a recently released document available by
request which may be of interest to you – “Knowledge Article: Review the escalation and
prioritisation matrix “.
If you wish to discuss this process, please contact me by email a
t xxx@xxxx.xxx.xx.
If you do not contact me within this period, that is by
15 October 2025, I will proceed with my
FOI decision, as outlined previously.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
2 Section 24AB of the FOI Act.
3
Yours sincerely
Helen (HIL533) Senior Freedom of Information Officer
Information Release, Privacy and Legal Operations Branch
Reviews and Information Release Division
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