Our reference: FOI 22/23-0350
GPO Box 700
Canberra ACT 2601
1800 800 110
ndis.gov.au
23 September 2022
John Smith
By email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Dear John Smith
Freedom of Information request — Request consultation process
Thank you for your correspondence of 24 August 2022, 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 fol owing documents:
- The titles and delivery dates of al final reports and documents delivered to or produced
within the Directorate, since 1 January 2010, in relation to compensation recovery
- The titles and delivery dates of al final reports delivered to or produced by the
Directorate, since 1 January 2010, in relation to the recovery of funding from participants.
To be clear, I am not requesting the title page, I am instead am instead [sic] requesting
the title/names of reports. This should be no more than a few words for each relevant
document.
On 14 September 2022, in response to our question for more information, you advised:
Apologies, by Directorate I meant agency, and from 2013 would be appropriate -
thank you.
On 15 September 2022, we sent a further fol ow up email to you, however, we have not
received a response to date.
Practical refusal
I am authorised to make decisions under section 23(1) of the FOI Act.
I am writing to advise that your request does not provide enough information about the
documents you are seeking access to, and in its current form is likely to result in a
substantial and unreasonable diversion of resources. This is cal ed 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 cal ed 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.
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Why I intend to refuse your request
Your request does not satisfy section 15(2)(b) of the FOI Act, as we were unable to identify
the specific documents you are seeking access to. As mentioned above, we sought further
information from you about the documents you are requesting access to, and we have not
received a response from you.
As advised in our emails to you on 14 and 15 September 2022, if we are to take the scope of
your request at literal meaning, it could involve tens or hundreds of thousands of documents,
many of which relate to individual participants. This would be an unreasonable diversion of
resources.
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:
Providing specific search terms for reports you are interested in
Providing more information about the types of documents you are interested in
You have 14 days to contact me and do one of the fol owing:
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 fol owing address:
Freedom of Information Section
Parliamentary, Ministerial & FOI Branch
Government Division
National Disability Insurance Agency
GPO Box 700
CANBERRA ACT 2601
If you do not contact me within this period, that is by COB 7 October 2022, your FOI request
wil be taken to have been withdrawn under subsection 24AB(7) and wil not be dealt with
any further.
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Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
Yours sincerely
Carolyn
Assistant Director FOI
Parliamentary, Ministerial & FOI Branch
Government Division
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