Dear Victoria University of Wellington,

This OIA is in response to VUW stating in a response to a separate OIA that "The University has no way of easily searching for other records [other than emails] to identify those that mention <keywords requested in OIA>"

This raised the concern that VUW does not have the systems or processes to enable it to comply with the Public records Act or the OIA.

Therefore, please provide records for:
OIA
1) The business processes and training materials for servicing OIA Requests
2) Any Audits (internal or external) that relate to OIA compliance
3) The latest reporting (e.g. KPIs or Dashboard) that quantifies OIA compliance
4) Ombudsman's decisions about OIA requests declined by VUW

Public Records Act
5) The business processes and training materials for complying with the Public Records Act
6) Any Audits (internal or external) that relate to Public Records Act compliance
7) Any reporting or KPIs that detail what Retention and Disposal activities have occurred in the last period reported on.

Information Architecture
8) High level information architecture document for VUW that describes the main technologies, products and partners that are used - with the main focus on:
8a) Record Search capability
8b) Retention and Disposal capability

For example (8):
- might mention that Microsoft Sharepoint and Exchange is used for document storage and search..... or some other products.
- is not looking for technical details of integration or search capability

Yours faithfully,

Chris Johnston

Dear OIA Requests,

I would like to compliment VUW on the response to this OIA.

It contains the required information, and the documents and processes you returned also show a commitment to the maintenance of Public Records for archive and making Official Information available to the public.

A couple of comments – that do not require a response from VUW at this time:
COMMENT A) STAFF EXPECTATIONS
Staff are also clearly briefed as part of their employment, that:
IRM Booklet.pdf
"All information held by the University, including by Council or by individual staff members, is subject to the Official Information Act (OIA), and therefore can be requested by any member of the public. This includes all emails, files, memos, records, images and even handwritten notes. "

“WHO DOES THIS APPLY TO?
You! All permanent and temporary University staff, academic and professional (including contractors).”

Clearly there are also specific grounds for redacting and not releasing documents (or parts thereof) under the OIA, but every staff member is aware that in the normal course of their work – whether they are having free or frank discussions or not – that the OIA applies to them and the Information / University Information they create (in all forms).

From the documents returned, my understanding how VUW briefs its academic staff during their employment is that:
1) All Information created by all staff is OIA’able as it is University Information and
2) Once published via the OIA, then even for academic staff, the published Information would become a Public Record under the Public Records Act 2005 as it has become a Record of the University (because it has been made public through the administrative side of the University).
3) The original (un-redacted or withheld) records that form the basis of the OIA response could also be a Public Record as they are the basis of the released information and evidence of the justification for the decisions made. This is indicated in the OIA process document that requires the Information returned for triage/assessment to be stored in an area managed by the Administrative side of the University.

OIA process document.pdf
Step 10: “Make any valid redactions to the information and save (do not apply redactions yet
so staff can still assess), and draft the response – proofread and ensure all questions
have been answered”

COMMENT B) AUDIT vs TECHNOLOGY CHANGE
AGE OF AUDIT AND TECHNOLOGY CHANGE
I note the last audit by Archives New Zealand ended 23rd September 2011 is very old relative to the underlying technology change that VUW will have experienced using the O365/SharePoint and EMC Isilon platforms.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Johnston