Tēnā koutou,

Several NZ Police policy documents have been released under the Official Information Act in the past. However, as time passes the details of active policies will understandably change, so documents that were released in the past may no longer be current.

I am interested in understanding both the degree to which these policy documents released in the past are out of date, and the scope of which other NZ Police policy documents might exist without having been made publicly available. I am also interested in understanding the different types of policy documents used by NZ Police and how they are organised.

In 2012, NZ Police released a list of all policy documents broken down by name and type. The response was published on fyi.org.nz here: https://fyi.org.nz/request/new_zealand_p...

As well as providing a list of chapters of the Police Manual, this policy list also included General Instructions and Commissioner’s Circulars.

Some of the Police Manual chapters that have subsequently been released under the OIA have been accompanied by version numbers. For example, the “Arms” chapter of the Police Manual released in January 2017 was annotated with “Version : 16.0”:
https://fyi.org.nz/request/5014-selected...

Other Police Manual chapters have instead been released under the heading “Police Instructions” and have not had a version number. For example, the Fleeing Driver Policy document released here in September 2020:
https://fyi.org.nz/request/13497-request...

The Police Manual chapter “Police investigations of complaints and notifiable incidents”, published on the NZ Police website, also has the heading “Police Instructions” and no version number:
https://www.police.govt.nz/about-us/abou...
https://www.police.govt.nz/sites/default...

Please release the following information regarding NZ Police policies that are currently in effect, excluding local orders:

1. A list of current NZ Police policy documents, including Police Manual chapters, General Instructions, and Commissioner’s Circulars. Please include:
a) The name of the policy
b) The type of the policy
c) The date at which the current version of the policy came into effect
d) Where applicable, the version of the current policy (e.g. “12.0”)
e) If the policy belongs to one or more groups of similar policies, e.g. “Intelligence”, what group or groups does it belong to?
f) If the policy has been published online by NZ Police, a URL where it is available

2. What legal authority underpins the Police Manual and its chapters? For example, is it a type of Commissioner’s circular as referred to by section 30(1)(b) of the Policing Act 2008?

3. How does NZ Police manage different versions of policy documents? For example, are all policy documents assigned a version number?

Please also explain any relevant caveats that should be kept in mind when analysing this information.

Please provide this information in an accessible, searchable format without a watermark. I would prefer that the response to part 1 of my request be provided in a spreadsheet format, such as CSV or XLSX.

If any part of my request is unclear, please don't hesitate to contact me.

I understand that several hundred documents will fall within the scope of my request. If any of the information that I have requested in part 1 of my request would be difficult to retrieve, I would be happy to discuss altering or refining my request.

Ngā mihi,
Mark Hanna

Tēnā koe,

Thank you for releasing this information. However, it looks like part of my request was not considered. In particular, I specified that I would prefer the information to be released in a particular way:

“Please provide this information in an accessible, searchable format without a watermark. I would prefer that the response to part 1 of my request be provided in a spreadsheet format, such as CSV or XLSX.”

However, the Police Instructions Policy was provided with a “Released pursuant to Official Information Act (1982)” watermark, and the information I requested in part 1 of my request was provided as a 9 page table embedded in a PDF.

I’d like to reiterate my request that this information be provided in the formats I requested.

I’m sure you can understand that it is frustrating to have had to wait over two weeks since the legal due date for my request passed, only to find that an important part of my request appears not to have been considered. I specified this preferred way to receive the information because I wanted to pre-empt any potential accessibility and usability concerns that may arise from some fairly common practices in OIA responses.

As I’m sure you are aware, section 16(2) of the Official Information Act requires that an agency must make information available in the way preferred by the requester unless to do so would:

- Impair efficient administration
- Be contrary to any legal duty of the department or venture or Minister of the Crown or organisation in respect of the document
- Prejudice the interests protected by section 6 or section 7 or section 9 and (in the case of the interests protected by section 9) there is no countervailing public interest.

However, I don’t believe any of these reasons are likely to apply in this instance. Rather, I expect this was just an unfortunate oversight, and I hope it’s one that will be addressed in such a way that would prevent similar oversights in the future.

If there was a deliberate decision not to provide this information in the way I prefer, section 16(3) of the Official Information Act requires that you inform me of the reason why the information was not provided in the way I prefer. If that was the case, then under section 16(3)(b) I would also ask that you please provide me with the grounds in support of that reason.

I have recently viewed 60+ Police Manual chapters that have been released under the Official Information Act in recent years, and I believe only one or two others have had a watermark. Also, Police has had no trouble releasing information to me in spreadsheet formats such as XLSX in the past.

I expect that the information released to me must have first been prepared in the formats I requested, before being transformed into the formats it was eventually released in. So I hope it will be easy for you to provide them to me in my preferred format reasonably quickly.

I would also like to draw your attention to the Ombudsman’s guide on proactive release. Though this is not exactly the same context, I think his guidance on watermarks applies equally well here:

https://www.ombudsman.parliament.nz/reso...

“‘Released under the OIA’

One potential barrier to accessibility is the use of ‘watermarks’. Watermarks are sometimes attached to documents to show they have been released under the OIA, or released proactively. Watermarks can interfere with reader software, and create difficulties for people with vision or cognitive impairments.

The use of watermarks is not required. It is a practice that evolved out of a concern that information released under the OIA could be misrepresented as having been leaked... Agencies could publish information without a watermark, or use the header or footer of a document to note that it has been released proactively.”

In this case, your response is published automatically on fyi.org.nz, so I don’t expect there could be any reasonable confusion regarding how this information was made public. Even in cases where requests are not made via FYI, though, watermarks can still present an unnecessary accessibility barrier.

Likewise, converting tables from a spreadsheet into a PDF makes them difficult to use. Often, either manual or automatic conversion back from a PDF into a spreadsheet is necessary to make the information useful, and that carries with it a risk of transcription errors.

When I wrote to Minister for Disability Issues Carmel Sepuloni in 2017 regarding my concerns with accessibility practices in OIA responses across the public sector, she wrote to me that:

“Providing OIA responses in accessible formats should be standard practice as part of an open and transparent government.”

I appreciate that significant progress has been made, both by PNHQ and elsewhere in the public sector, to release official information in more accessible formats. For example, not too long ago it was common for OIA response letters to be released as wholly inaccessible image-based PDFs, whereas now it is far more common for these response letters to be text-based.

However, there is still more progress to be made in this area. I hope you will further refine your approach to release information in more accessible formats as standard practice, rather than converting them to formats that introduce unnecessary accessibility barriers.

Section 16(2) of the OIA in particular is an important accessibility provision, as it allows requesters to help agencies provide information in formats that serve their particular accessibility or usability needs. I think these parts of requests may sometimes be trimmed out when a request is processed in order to discern exactly what information has been requested. I hope you can refine your approach here, as well, to ensure that such preferences are accounted for in the future.

Ngā mihi,
Mark Hanna

Tēnā koe Sarah,

Thanks, I appreciate you getting this sort for me quickly.

Ngā mihi,
Mark Hanna