Dear Commonwealth Ombudsman,

This is a request for documents under the FOI Act 1982.

According to the 2020-2021 Ombudsman’s annual report:

“This year, the Office assessed 49 disclosures about other Commonwealth agencies, slightly down from the 56 assessed in 2019–20. Of the 49 disclosures, 35 were assessed as PIDs – 30 were allocated to the relevant agency for investigation, one was allocated to another oversight agency, and we internally allocated 4 for investigation. We also accepted the allocation of 7 PIDs from other agencies.”

I would like to know:

a) which oversight agency that one public interest disclosure was allocated to; and
b) the name of the agency to which people alleged to have engaged in disclosable conduct belonged,

because, as is intimated in the passage set out above, it is not in the ordinary course for public interest disclosures to be allocated to an agency other than the relevant agency about which the disclosure is made.

I would like access to a suitable document or documents that identify the oversight agency that the disclosure was allocated to (e.g. the letter “allocating” the disclosure to the oversight agency), and any one document (you are at liberty to choose that which is most appropriate) that identifies the agency to which people who engaged in disclosable conduct belong.

You may provide access to the documents requested by providing scans or digital copies of the documents by return email.

Yours faithfully,

Marek

Dear Commonwealth Ombudsman,

I withdraw this request.

Yours faithfully,

Marek