17 July 2024
Anon
[FYI request #26884 email]
Dear Anon
Your Official Information Act request, reference: GOV-032511
I refer to your message via fyi.org.nz of 3 July 2024 declining to provide the further information that ACC
sought to be able to deal with your request.
ACC sent you a letter on 5 July 2024 explaining in detail why we needed information about yourself and the
reasons for this official information request.
ACC notes that you do not accept ACC’s explanation justifies it asking for the information it has sought and
claim that ACC is treating you inconsistently with the way it treats others.
As previously explained to you, the Ombudsman accepts that where an agency receives an official
information request like yours it may need to ask the requestor about themselves and the reasons for their
request.
ACC is treating you no differently than it would anyone else whom it might reasonably ask if their request
was one of many related requests that could potentially be responded to together or refined in the ways
allowed by the Official Information Act.
For the reasons that follow, ACC declines your request.
• Over the past two months ACC has received more than 40 apparently closely related official
information requests that also appear to be made by or on behalf of the same person.
• These include a significant number of requests apparently made by you under the same name,
including the eight other separate requests where ACC received identical messages from the
requestor on 15 July, and other requests that are either anonymous or made under other names.
• All of these 40 or more information requests require considerable expense and effort for ACC to
respond to. ACC estimates that it is currently allocating more than the equivalent on one full time
employee to respond to each of these requests separately, despite the fact that they seem closely
related. It would likely require further expense and effort to produce all of the information sought
in each of these requests.
• In one of the requests apparently made under your name, the requestor has acknowledged having
made more than one request, but neither they nor you have provided any details of any other
requests so to assist ACC to consider them together.
ACC has decided that you, or people closely related to you, have probably made all of the large number of
recent requests mentioned above whether made under your name or not.
The way that you, or people acting for you, appear to have asked for a wide range of information in many
separate requests rather than include all questions in one request interferes with ACC’s ability to determine
whether and how it might be able to apply various provisions of the Official information Act to deal with your
request. Those provisions relate to whether the requests taken as a whole require substantial collation or
research so as to:
• allow ACC to decline some or all of the requests under s18(f) of the Act;
• consider combining your request with any other requests made by you under s18A(2) of the Act;
• fully to consider fixing a charge for providing the documents concerned under s15 and s18A(1) of the
Act.
ACC considers that your request is frivolous or vexatious in terms of s18(h) of the Act. Your request appears
to be part of a wider course of conduct making numerous official information requests in a way that prevents
ACC from applying the parts of the Official Information Act that protect agencies from being put to
unreasonable effort and expense in responding to official information requests. You have declined to assist
ACC by providing information that might permit ACC to deal with your request along with many other related
requests. ACC has received similar refusals to assist in the eight other requests referred to above. Your
request and your refusal to answer questions about it appear to be part of a course of conduct designed to
prevent ACC from taking legitimate steps to minimise the costs and inconvenience of responding to a series
of related requests.
If ACC is wrong and your request is not one among many related requests then please let me know urgently,
or if you prefer, take the issue to the Ombudsman.
If you are not happy with this response, you have the right to make a complaint to the Ombudsman.
Information about how to do this is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or by phoning 0800 802
602.
Ngā mihi
Christopher Johnston
Manager Official Information Act Services
Government Engagement
