Our reference: FOI 25/26-0182 (LEXD 1612)
GPO Box 700
Canberra ACT 2601
1800 800 110
ndis.gov.au
16 October 2025
Nicky T
Right to Know
By email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Dear Nicky T
Freedom of Information request — Request consultation process
Thank you for your correspondence of 20 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).
Scope of your request
You have requested access to the following documents:
“…Al technical advice, official guidelines and assessment tools related to the following:-
Accepted professionals who wil be able to complete a Vineland Recognition of allied
health professionals not covered by AHPRA including social workers, speech
pathologists and play therapists
Official guidance related to the inclusion or exclusion of play therapy in children’s NDIS
plans.
Process used in determining the funding periods in plans (monthly, quartely etc).
Justifications and assessment tools used to specify stated therapeutic disciplines within
capacity building budgets.
Assessment tools and guidelines used to justify a ‘typical support package’ for a both
child under 9 and adolescents with autism or intellectual disability, including internal
operational guidelines, advice, memos and staff updates.
Documentation and advice guidelines provided by TAPID regarding assessing access
decision, criteria for approving non typical support package for autistic children and
adolescents…”
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
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operations due to its size/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
We have conducted preliminary searches of the NDIA’s systems, using all reasonable
search terms that could return documents relevant to your request. In addition, 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 systems. Those searches indicate that the NDIA has a voluminous
number of individual documents that may be relevant to your request, with 7 business areas
identified as holding relevant documents and an estimated timeframe of 2-6 hours per
business area to locate and extract the documents.
On my reasonable estimate, I consider that there is more than 1,000 pages worth of material
that falls within the scope of your request as currently worded, not including annexures. At a
conservative estimate of 1 minute per page, this would take an FOI officer more than 16
hours to simply review and collate the documents extracted by the relevant business areas
to determine if they fall within scope.
The documents that are assessed as being within scope of the request wil then need to be
reviewed for any sensitivities and possible exemption under the FOI Act and scheduled, we
wil need to consider any consultations and carry these out if required, a decision wil need to
be made on each document, and a decision letter prepared. This wil significantly increase
the hours that it wil 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,
pursuant to section 24AA(1)(a)(i), 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 wil 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:
• Limiting the request to a single topic; or
• Limiting the request to a maximum of two topics; and
• Requesting current versions of documents; or
• Providing a date range for the versions of documents sought
You have 14 days from the date you receive this letter to contact me and do one of the
following:
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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 wil 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 xxx@xxxx.xxx.xx.
Alternatively, you can reply in writing to the following address:
Freedom of Information Section
Information Release, Privacy and Legal Operations Branch
Reviews and Information Release Division
National Disability Insurance Agency
GPO Box 700
CANBERRA ACT 2601
If you do not contact me within this period, that is by 30 October 2025, I will issue you a
formal decision letter that confirms my reasons for refusing your request.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
Yours sincerely
Rachelle
Senior Freedom of Information Officer
Information Release, Privacy and Legal Operations Branch
Reviews and Information Release Division
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