UNCLASSIFIED
Our references: FA 14/04/00565; ADF2014/12752
Dear Mr Fairless
I have made a preliminary enquiry with the relevant business area as to the extent of your revised scope. The department considerers that your request may no longer be an unreasonable diversion of resources.
I have accepted the following as your revised scope:
1 - Any official policy which relate to the use of Social Media (both Official and Unofficial) by the DIBP or employees and contractors of DIBP.
2 - All correspondence originating from or sent to the National Communications Branch since the 1st of September 2013 that could be reasonably interpreted to be issuing direction, instruction or advice to DIBP employees or contractors on Official or Unofficial use of Social Media."
The processing of your request has re-commenced and the current due date of your request is now Sunday 11 May 2014. However, as this date falls on a non-working day, s.36(2) of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 provides that the latest date a decision can be finalised is the next working day, which is Monday 12 May 2014.
Yours Sincerely
Janelle
__________________________________
Janelle Raineri
FOI Inbox Manager
FOI & Privacy Policy Section
Department of Immigration and Border Protection
Email: [email address]
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Fairless [mailto:foi+[email address]]
Sent: Thursday, 24 April 2014 6:59 PM
To: FOI
Subject: TRIM: RE: Notice under s.24AB of FOI Act – FA 14/04/00565 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
Dear Janelle,
Thanks for the explanation.
Could you advise if the revised scope below deals with the issues you have raised:
"I make a request for:
1 - Any official policy which relate to the use of Social Media (both Official and Unofficial) by the DIBP or employees and contractors of DIBP.
2 - All correspondence originating from or sent to the National Communications Branch since the 1st of September 2013 that could be reasonably interpreted to be issuing direction, instruction or advice to DIBP employees or contractors on Official or Unofficial use of Social Media."
If no Practical Refusal reason would exist, I'm happy to revise my request accordingly. If a Practical Refusal reason would exist, can you please detail what further steps I can take to revise the request?
Yours sincerely,
Ben Fairless
-----Original Message-----
UNCLASSIFIED
Our references: FA 14/04/00565; ADF2014/12752
Dear Mr Fairless
Thank you for your enquiry, I have provided some advice for you to consider below.
In order for an authorised FOI decision maker to be satisfied that all reasonable searches and all relevant documents have been identified, in response to your request, a search and retrieval directly from those officers captured by your request would be best. This is because there are limitations to other methods such as an IT search and/or a TRIM records search.
The department can search emails, although has limited functionality in some respects. The department does not currently have journaling of emails covering a period longer than 3 months. In instances where emails are required from a longer time period, a backup of the relevant email
account(s) is required. This requires the department to identify all relevant officers captured by your request, for which my notice included advice that there is no current high level list to identify all the relevant individuals. This service is performed by the department's external IT service provider and is charged to the department.
Further to that, a custom search script would need to be written to identify emails potentially in scope. Again, this is charged to the department.
It is likely that the department would consider issuing a charges notice under section 29 of the FOI Act and you would be charged the cost for those services as this is outside our business as usual practices for the processing of FOI requests.
The department can conduct a search within the TRIM records system, however key word searches could return a significant number of records for which many would likely be irrelevant to the scope of your request. I note each record returned as part of the search would need to be reviewed to identify if it held a relevant document. I would consider that this too would meet the parameters for an unreasonable diversion of the departments resources.
You may consider focusing your request to specific individuals; positions; and/or business areas within the department. For example: any high level policy documents on the use of social media; and/or any emails held by the National Communications Branch, including the National Communications Manager on the use of social media. This would narrow the search and possibly allow the relevant business area (in this case, the National Communications Branch) to more easily locate potentially relevant documents.
I hope this information is of assistance
Yours Sincerely
Janelle
__________________________________
Janelle Raineri
FOI Inbox Manager
FOI & Privacy Policy Section
Department of Immigration and Border Protection
Email: [1][DIBP request email]
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UNCLASSIFIED