Dear Ministry for Primary Industries,

I am writing to request information about the access requests that MPI has made to OSPRI and/or any of its predecessor organisations for the purpose of obtaining data from the NAIT (National Animal Identification and Tracing) database.

It would appear, for example, that based on the NAIT Information System Access Panel's annual reports, MPI has been making an ongoing series of requests for "no of cattle/deer in NAIT and no of cattle/deer establishments in NAIT" under section 40(e) of the NAIT Act and "animal movement data over time" under section 40(g) of the NAIT Act.

I have a series of questions regarding all of the data access requests that MPI has made for access to data for the purposes set out in sections 40(e) and 40(g):

(1) For each of these access requests, please provide a copy of the NAIT Data Access Request form (and any attachments) and the response(s) and decision(s) received as a result of these access requests. Please also provide copies of any correspondence, internal discussions, briefing notes, and/or other materials that discuss or relate to these access requests.

(2) For each of these access requests that was approved, please outline the restrictions (if any) that were placed on the data supplied to MPI. Please also describe the precise nature of the data supplied, such as which items of information from the NAIT database were included, the point(s) in time covered by the data, and the level of detail (e.g. whether information was aggregated by farm/watershed/TA).

(2a) If MPI still holds a copy of the original data supplied as a result of an access request, please include a copy of such data. If MPI does not currently hold a copy of the original data, for how long did MPI hold the data and what were the circumstances that resulted in MPI no longer holding the data?

(3) The purpose of the data access requests was either "to provide data supporting productivity, market assurance, and trading requirements" under 40(e) or "to provide statistical data for policy development and related advice" under 40(g). Therefore, please provide copies of all documents, reports, publications, analyses, spreadsheets, statistical returns or other material (including drafts) which was produced from, derived from, or otherwise incorporates the NAIT data that was supplied to MPI for section 40(e) or 40(g) purposes.

In addition, I have some general questions around MPI's access to and use of NAIT data:

(4) Does MPI have any means of accessing the NAIT database other than by submitting individual data access requests? For example, has MPI been granted "direct access" to the NAIT database? Or are there any arrangements whereby MPI will receive recurring access to the NAIT data, such as daily or monthly updates? Or has MPI made any enquiries or requests to access NAIT data in a manner other than making individual data access requests?

(4a) If so, please provide any correspondence or documents relating to the means of access (or proposed access) to NAIT data, the conditions (if any) under which MPI may access (or proposes to access) the NAIT data, and the purposes for which MPI has used or is planning to use its access (or its proposed access) to the NAIT data.

(5) Section 49 of the NAIT Act allows the NAIT organisation to publish statistics based on the NAIT data. It does not appear that any such statistics have been published. Please provide any correspondence, documents, reports, or other material which relate to section 49 of the NAIT Act, to the NAIT organisation's failure to produce any statistics, to any requests or proposals by MPI for the NAIT organisation to produce statistics, or to any advice or proposals for MPI to produce statistics on behalf of the NAIT organisation.

Finally, I note that section 51(1) of the NAIT Act 2012 specifically exempts "data in the NAIT information system" from the purview of the Official Information Act. My interpretation of this clause is that the exemption only applies to the data while it is held in the NAIT database, and does not serve to exclude the application of the OIA to the data once it has been supplied to MPI.

Kind regards,
Andrew Tipton