FOIREQ16/00021 - Privacy Complaint Statistics - Commonwealth Department of Veterans' Affairs
Dear Office of the Australian Information Commissioner,
I request the following information (or any document held by the OAIC that reveals), by financial year, for financial years 2010/2011 to 2014/2015 (inclusive):
* the total number of s 36(1) privacy complaints received about DVA by the OAIC;
* the total number of privacy complaints about DVA dismissed under s 41 of the Privacy Act by the Privacy Commissioner;
* the total number of privacy complaints about DVA that had Investigations opened under s 40(1) of the Privacy Act by the OAIC;
* the total number of privacy complaints about DVA where the OAIC attempted conciliation (whether under s 40A powers or not) between the complainant and DVA;
- and the number of conciliation attempts that did not proceed because DVA refused to take part in conciliation;
* the total number of OAIC registered privacy complaints about DVA that were upheld or settled by agreement; and
* the number of times, if any, the Privacy Commissioner has exercised his s 44 powers to compel the production of documents from DVA.
This is a restatement of the FOI Request made 3 June 2016, so the 30 day statutory period for processing this request remains extant (which requires a decision by 3 July 2016.)
Yours faithfully,
Mr Knowles
Mr Knowles (Account suspended) left an annotation ()
I received the following email from the OAIC (which the OAIC has not put up themselves on Right to Know):
Date: 15 June 2016 at 2:22 PM
Dear Mr Knowles,
Thank you for your clarifications.
I will just raise with you now that in processing your FOI request, the searches I will undertake will be for documents that expressly contain the statistical information you seek, and I will further enquire with relevant OAIC officers whether a report can be run from our computer system that contains the information you seek.
There is no obligation under the FOI Act for an agency to search for and compile statistical data in response to an FOI request. That is, an agency is not obliged to search through its computer system for specific data and then transfer that data onto a table and thereby produce a document in the way that your FOI request implies. The OAIC is also not obliged to write computer software, such as new report templates, to meet the scope of a request. Doing so would be using the OAIC computers in a manner that is not ordinarily available to the OAIC.
I will of course undertake reasonable searches for documents, but I reiterate my earlier point that the FOI Act gives a right of access to documents, and not to information per se.
Thank you again.
Kind regards
Ken Richards | A/g Assistant Director | FOI Dispute Resolution
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
[The OAIC are being somewhat disingenuous here - they do collect and collate complaint statistics, for privacy complaints made to them, by agency they are about, they just don't report them in their Annual Reports like the Commonwealth Ombudsman does for the type of complaints they receive - even the Commonwealth Department of Veterans' Affairs reports in it's Annual Reports the internal privacy complaints it receives. For some reason, the OAIC is unwilling to publicly report the number of privacy complaints it receives by the agency they are about, even if the agency involves does for their internal privacy complaints]
Dear Office of the Australian Information Commissioner,
To clarify, the spreadsheet attached to my FOI request was a comprehension aid only (to help understand what I was looking for, as obviously it can be a bit confusing given it's wordy in text alone). There was no request for the OAIC to fill my spreadsheet - implied or otherwise (it's the data I'm looking for, in whatever form it comes).
I remain confident that the OAIC internally collates such information, by financial year, as sought (at the very least for the majority of information sought) as part of it's reporting to the OAIC Executive and Government (the OAIC just doesn't publicly report this information, even though similar reporting is commonplace in agency Annual Reports). The OAIC, after all, reports these statistics at a rolled up agency de-identified level in it's Annual Reports, so it must compile these statistics from the information requested.
Noting that, despite the Information and Privacy Commissioners extolling how agencies should comply with both the spirit and the principles of the Information and Privacy Guidelines, the OAIC itself appears to not abide by them themselves (the recent blanket s 47E(d) exemption for all 91 documents that fell within the scope of FOIREQ16/00014 - even though the vast bulk of those documents had previously been provided to previously by the OAIC, a bizarre take-back - being a case in point). I would hope that sort of dishonesty will not be the case here, although it seems to be inferred that it will be.
I will await your response.
Yours faithfully,
Mr Knowles
Mr Knowles (Account suspended) left an annotation ()
I decided to disclose and share this FOI request to the OAIC as on a prior FOI request (FOIREQ16/00014) Caitlin Emery from the OAIC claimed "exempt in full - s 47E(d) - substantial adverse effect on the proper and efficient conduct of the operations of an agency" for all 91 documents that came within the scope of that FOI request - even though the bulk of those exempted documents had already been provided to me earlier by the OAIC (by request, not under FOI).
I'm afraid the OAIC may pull the same unethical action and just claim another unlawful blanket exemption. It may be less likely to engage in that mischief if it has to provide this FOI here. Here's hoping it was just a one-off.