Kia ora Jasmine

We acknowledge receipt of your Official Information Act request.

If we have any questions or need to seek clarification on any points we will be in touch soon. Otherwise, we will seek to respond to your request as soon as practicable and no later than 20 working days after the date your request was received (by 16 March 2022). If we are unable to respond to your request by then, we will notify you of an extension of this timeframe.

Ngā mihi
Kelsey

Kelsey Kennard
Official Information and Compliance Coordinator

Office of the Registrar | Te Tari o Te Pouroki me te Kaituhi ki te Kaunihera
University of Otago | Te Whare Wānanga o Otāgo
New Zealand | Aotearoa
Email | Īmera [University of Otago request email]

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Kia ora Jasmine

 

I refer to your Official Information Act (Act) request dated 16 February
2022. You have requested the average time from enrolment to completion,
and average time of deferral, for all PhDs in the Division of Sciences and
Division of Health Sciences, broken down by year since 2010.

 

We have been processing your request and wanted to give you an update of
our progress and also check a matter with you please.

 

We can provide you with some of the information you have requested for the
completion data and deferral data. We currently have readily to hand
information relating to the years 2000 – 2010. However, regarding the
information you have requested from 2011 onwards – unfortunately we only
currently have readily to hand the medians for time to completion for a
combined dataset of 2015 – 2019, which is not broken down by year.

 

We have consulted with our analysts and have been informed that it would
take extensive staff time and research to collate the information for the
remaining information you have requested – i.e. the average time of
completion and average time of deferral for the years 2011 onwards, broken
down by year. They estimate that it could take approximately 12 hours.
Typically where we receive information requests that require such a
lengthy collation time we either propose a charge (pursuant to section
15(A) of the Act) or decline the request (pursuant to section 18(f) of the
Act) on the basis that the information requested cannot be made available
without substantial collation or research.

 

The University is interested for its own purposes to collate the
information regarding the average times of completion and deferral since
2011. However, our staff are very busy with tasks related to COVID-19 and
other matters, which is having an impact on the operations and focus of
the University at this time. We hope to be able to undertake this work
when it is practically manageable.

 

Accordingly, with respect to the information you have requested, would you
be agreeable to accept instead the data we hold for the years 2000 to 2010
plus the information we hold on the medians for time to completion for a
combined dataset of 2015 – 2019 (not broken down per year)? We can provide
this information to you by 16 March 2022. We can then provide you (at no
charge) with a copy of the data for 2011 onwards as soon as this
information has been collated by our analysts. In the meantime, our
Graduate Research School would be happy to discuss with you any specific
issues or concerns you may have.

 

We will wait to hear back from you before we continue to process your
request.

 

Ngâ mihi

Kelsey

 

 

Kelsey Kennard

Official Information and Compliance Coordinator

 

Office of the Registrar | Te Tari o Te Pouroki me te Kaituhi ki te
Kaunihera

University of Otago | Te Whare Wânanga o Otâgo

New Zealand | Aotearoa

Email | Îmera [1][University of Otago request email]

 

 

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Kia ora Jasmine

Please see attached our response to your information request dated 16 February 2022 made under the Official Information Act 1982.

Ngā mihi
Kelsey

Kelsey Kennard
Official Information and Compliance Coordinator

Office of the Registrar | Te Tari o Te Pouroki me te Kaituhi ki te Kaunihera
University of Otago | Te Whare Wānanga o Otāgo
New Zealand | Aotearoa
Email | Īmera [University of Otago request email]

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