This is an HTML version of an attachment to the Freedom of Information request 'McKinsey & Company reports to DPMC'.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
      
 
 
 
ONE NATIONAL CIRCUIT 
  
BARTON 
    FOI 
 
FOI/2020/066  
 
 
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 1982 
 
 
REQUEST BY: 
Mr John Smith 
 
 
               DECISION BY: 
Mitchell Johnson 
 
 
 
Assistant Secretary 
 
 
 Parliamentary and Government Branch 
 
 
Mr John Smith 
By Email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx 
 
 
Dear Mr Smith  
 
I refer to your email of 12 March 2020 in which you made a request to the Department of the 
Prime Minister and Cabinet (the Department) under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (the 
FOI Act) in the following terms: 
 
Please supply a copy of the following documents: 
 
All final reports delivered to DPMC since 18 September 2013, that are stored in either 
a PDF or Word document format. 
 
All powerpoint presentations delievered [sic] to DPMC since 18 September 2013, that 
are stored in a powerpoint document format.
 
 
As advised in the Department’s email of 25 March 2020, the Department has understood the 
above request to be as follows (on the basis of information in your email): 
 
Please supply a copy of the following documents: 
 
All final reports delivered [by McKinsey & Company] to DPMC since 18 September 
2013, that are stored in either a PDF or Word document format. 
 
All powerpoint presentations delievered [by McKinsey and Company] to DPMC since 
18 September 2013, that are stored in a powerpoint document format. 

 
 
 

Postal Address:  PO Box 6500, CANBERRA ACT 2600 
Telephone: +61 2 6271 5849   Fax: +61 2 6271 5776   www.pmc.gov.au   ABN:  18 108 001 191 

 
Decision-maker 
 
I am authorised to make this decision in accordance with arrangements approved by the 
Department’s Secretary under section 23 of the FOI Act.  
 
Refusal of requests – diversion of resources 
 
Section 24(1) of the FOI Act provides that: 
(1)  If an agency or Minister is satisfied, when dealing with a request for a document, 
that a practical refusal reason exists in relation to the request (see section 24AA), 
the agency or Minister: 
 

(a)  must undertake a request consultation process (see section 24AB); and 
 
 
(b)  if, after the request consultation process, the agency or Minister is satisfied 
that the practical refusal reason still exists—the agency or Minister may 
refuse to give access to the document in accordance with the request. 

 
Section 24AA(1)(a)(i) of the FOI Act provides that, in relation to an agency, a request raises a 
practical refusal reason if the work involved in processing the request would substantially and 
unreasonably divert the resources of the agency from its other operations. 
 
However, before an agency can refuse an FOI request in this manner, it is required by 
section 24AB of the FOI Act to give the applicant a notice advising of the decision-maker’s 
intention to refuse the FOI request and inviting the applicant to consider revising it to make it 
more manageable. This is called a ‘request consultation process’.   
 
On 2 April 2020, the Department wrote to you to advise that your request raised a practical 
refusal reason, on the basis that processing your request would substantially and unreasonably 
divert the resources of the Department from its other operations, in that at least 
6,900 documents have been identified that would need to be reviewed for relevance to your 
request, and invited you to revise the scope of your request. On the same day, you responded 
as follows: 
 
I agree to limit my request to only include in scope any documents that are stored as 
email attachments, within the inboxes of SES-level employees of the department only, 
and only when sent to that inbox directly from a McKinsey organisational email 
address.  

 
Decision 
 
I have decided to refuse your request under section 24(1)(b) of the FOI Act, on the basis that, 
following a request consultation process, the practical refusal reason remains in relation to 
your revised request, namely the work involved in processing the request would substantially 
and unreasonably divert the resources of the agency from its other operations. 
 
In making this decision, I have had regard to the following material: 
  your initial request; 
  correspondence and communications between the Department and yourself as part of 
the request consultation process; 
  your revised request; 
 


 
  the FOI Act; and 
  the ‘Guidelines issued by the Australian Information Commissioner under s 93A of 
the Freedom of Information Act 1982’1 (the FOI Guidelines). 
 
Reasons 
 
In deciding if a practical refusal reason exists, an agency must have regard to the resources 
required to perform the following activities specified in section 24AA(2) of the FOI Act:2 
  identifying, locating or collating documents within the filing system of the agency; 
  examining the documents; 
  deciding whether to grant, refuse or defer access; 
  consulting with other parties; 
  redacting exempt material from the documents; 
  making copies of documents; 
  notifying an interim or final decision to the applicant. 
 
Other matters may be relevant in deciding if a practical refusal reason exists such as the 
staffing resources available to an agency for FOI processing, whether the processing can only 
be undertaken by one or more specialist officers in an agency who have competing 
responsibilities, the impact that processing may have on other work in an agency including 
FOI processing, and whether there is a significant public interest in the documents requested.3 
 
The Department has undertaken further searches for documents within the scope of your 
request (as revised). Based on searches undertaken to date, a sample of eight attachments in 
scope of the request was reviewed by the Department. This sample equates to over 900 pages 
which the Department has estimated would take approximately 69 hours to process. 
Assuming the sample represents 10% of the documents in scope, it is estimated that 
processing the revised request would involve over 690 hours. This is a conservative estimate, 
as the total number of documents in scope of the request is likely to be in excess of 
80 documents. Accordingly, the revised request remains manifestly voluminous.  
 
As the Department advised in its practical refusal consultation notice, in addition to document 
search and retrieval, the documents would need to be individually examined to decide 
whether that material should be released, possible redactions made, a schedule of documents 
prepared and a decision letter written, which would also add to the time required to process 
your revised request.  
 
Further, the Department considers that the complexity of this FOI request is high. The 
documents identified as a result of the document searches would need to be individually 
examined for relevance. We expect the documents that are ultimately identified as within the 
scope of your FOI request will potentially require consideration of a range of exemptions 
under the FOI Act, such as section 45 (confidential information), section 47E(d) (substantial 
adverse effect on the operations of an agency), section 47F (personal information) and 
section 47G (business information). Separate consultations would need to be undertaken on a 
tailored basis for third parties. 
 
                                                 
1 FOI Guidelines combined November 2019 published on the web site of the Office of the Australian 
Information Commissioner at https://www.oaic.gov.au/freedom-of-information/foi-guidelines/ 
2 ‘Guidelines issued by the Australian Information Commissioner under s 93A of the Freedom of Information 
Act 1982
’, Part 3 – Processing and Deciding on Requests for Access (Version 1.6, January 2018), [3.116]. 
3 Ibid, [3.117]. 
 



 
Ordinary hours of work for full-time employees in the Department are 38 hours per week.4 
Having regard to the estimate of time to process the revised request, this means it would take 
one officer 18 weeks, at a minimum, to process the revised request.  
 
I am of the view that a practical refusal reason remains in relation to your revised request, 
namely that the work involved in processing your revised request would substantially and 
unreasonably divert the resources of the Department from its other operations. Accordingly, I 
have decided to refuse your request under section 24(1)(b) of the FOI Act. 
  
Review rights 
 
Information about your rights of review can be found on the website of the Office of the 
Australian Information Commissioner at https://www.oaic.gov.au/freedom-of-
information/reviews-and-complaints/.  
 
Complaint rights 
 
Information about you complaint rights can be found on the web site of the Office of the 
Australian Information Commissioner at https://www.oaic.gov.au/freedom-of-
information/reviews-and-complaints/. 
 
Yours sincerely 
 
 
 
 
 
Mitchell Johnson 
Assistant Secretary 
Finance, Property and Security Branch 
 
14 April 2020 
 
 
                                                 
4 Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Enterprise Agreement 2017-2020, [315].