133 Molesworth Street
PO Box 5013
Wellington 6140
New Zealand
T+64 4 496 2000
Sebastian
By email: [FYI request #15656 email]
Ref:
H202116597
Tēnā koe Sebastian
Partial release and decision on your request for official information
Thank you for your request under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act) received by the
Ministry of Health (the Ministry) on 22 November 2021 for:
“Copies of the minutes of all meetings of
1) the CVIP Governance Group
2) the CVIP Steering Group
Dated since the beginning of April”
Please accept the Ministry’s sincere apologies for the delay in providing you with the information
requested. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 response, the Ministry have been experiencing
significantly higher volumes of queries, which has resulted in significant delays to the
processing of Of icial Information Act requests. We recognise that the Ministry had failed to
comply with the statutory timeframe requirements of the Act.
Part of the information you have requested is enclosed, namely copies of the COVID-19
Vaccine and Immunisation Programme Governance Group meeting minutes. These are
itemised at Appendix 1 of this letter along with my decisions on release. Where information is
withheld under section 9 of the Act, please note I have considered the countervailing public
interest in release in making this decision and consider that it does not outweigh the need to
withhold at this time.
Please note, some of the initial Governance Group meeting minutes included a separate action
tracker as an appendix at the end of the meeting minutes. This action tracker compiled actions
that were already identified within the minutes of the meeting, in order to provide a quick
summary of actions from previous meetings for members of the Governance Group. As the
action tracker expanded over time, this action tracker became too long to include as an
appendix at the end of the minutes and started to be circulated to Governance Group members
prior to each meeting as a standalone document. As your request was specifical y for the
“minutes of all meetings”, the Ministry has not considered these action trackers to be within
scope of the request
Regarding the remainder of your request, the Ministry has decided to provide you copies of
meeting minutes for the COVID-19 Vaccine and Immunisation Programme Steering Group. This
information has been prepared however, it wil take us some time to finalise this information for
release. The Ministry wil provide this information to you by 10 June 2022.
Twelve sets of meeting minutes have been identified for this first part of the release, with some
information withheld under the following sections of the Act:
• 6(a) as its release would likely prejudice the international relations of the Government of
New Zealand;
• 9(2)(a) to protect the privacy of natural persons;
• 9(2)(b)(ii) where its release would likely unreasonably prejudice the commercial position
of the person who supplied the information;
• 9(2)(ba)(ii) to protect information that is subject to an obligation of confidence and
making it available would likely damage the public interest
• 9(2)(g)(i) to maintain the effective conduct of public affairs through the free and frank
expression of opinions by or between or to Ministers and officers and employees of any
public service agency;
I trust this partially fulfils your request. Under section 28(3) of the Act you have the right to ask
the Ombudsman to review any decisions made under this request. The Ombudsman may be
contacted by email at:
[email address] or by calling 0800 802 602.
Please note that this response, with your personal details removed, may be published on the
Ministry of Health website at:
www.health.govt.nz/about-ministry/information-releases.
Nāku noa, nā
Astrid Koornneef
Director
National Immunisation Programme
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Appendix 1: List of documents for release
#
Date
Document details
Decision on release
1
April – 22
Minutes of CVIP Governance Released with some information
November
Group meetings
withheld under the following sections of
2021
the Act:
• 6(a);
• 9(2)(a);
• 9(2)(b)(ii);
• 9(2)(ba)(ii);
• 9(2)(g)(i).
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