Dear Fire and Emergency New Zealand,

The major finding of the independent review of the 2017 Port Hills fires was that:

Interoperability is essential for emergency services. A single incident management system, well-rehearsed and practised, is critical to the success of Fire and Emergency New Zealand. (Ref Page 31)

Out of this Port Hill’s finding there was a recommendation that:

Fire and Emergency New Zealand adopts a single doctrine, the Australasian Inter-Service Incident Management System (AIIMS), for incident management. That the new organisation use this doctrine to train/exercise and develop people. (Ref Page 10)

Under the provisions of the Official Information Act I request copies of the advice, information, policy, future plans or other written instructions as issued to FENZ staff with respect to what single management system is to be used for any/all FENZ responses to incidents of any size or complexity. This should include incidents where FENZ is the only responding agency as well as multi-agency responses (eg Police, Ambo or CD are in attendance).

Yours faithfully,

Alan Thompson
Lower Hutt

Dear FENZ,

I note your advice that you have extended out the timeframe for a reply to my OIA to the 21st of June. This represents up to 45 working days to provide the information. The guide line I understand is 20 working days.

You will appreciate that it is difficult to understand why such a simple request for information that you hold in electronic form can not be collated and supplied within the 20 day target. Without any explanation as to why you can not achieve this simple task I have taken your advice and laid a complaint with the Ombudsman with regard to this delay.

I realise that the time the Ombudsman takes to investigate such matters well exceeds the time extension you have advised but I believe that it is important that the intentions of the Official Information Act are complied with and there is accountability when this is in question. The Ombudsman is currently looking at such issues and the failures of public sector organisations to comply with the Act, I will leave it to them to determine if your extension is reasonable or just a move to frustrate my request.

Alan Thompson