Kia ora James

This email acknowledges your below request for information made under the Official Information Act 1982.

Your request has been forwarded to the appropriate section of NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi for response. They will contact you if they require clarification of your request, more time to respond, or if your request has been transferred to another organisation to respond to. Unless more time is required, NZ Transport Agency will send a response to you within 20 working days of receiving your request – in this instance on or before [date] 2025.

Please note the summer holiday period for Official Information Act requests runs from 25 December to 15 January each year and means these days are not counted as working days. You can find out more about OIA timeframes during the Christmas period at: http://www.ombudsman.parliament.nz/.

If you would like to discuss your request with NZ Transport Agency, please contact us by email at [NZTA request email].

Ngâ mihi

Ministerial Services
Te Waka Kôtuia | Engagement & Partnerships
NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi
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Kia ora James

 

We are writing with regards to you request for information about the Hikoi
in November 2024 under the Official Information Act 1982 (the OIA).

 

Among other things, you have requested:

o Please provide all communications if any, between NZTA and the Hikoi
organisers.
o Please provide all communications if any between NZTA and NZ Police
regarding the hikoi.

 

We consider that your request for communications, as it currently stands,
is very broad in nature and cannot be met without substantial collation
and research. Unless it is refined, it is likely that it will be refused
under section 18(f) of the OIA.

Given the NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) involvement in the
monitoring and management of the state highway network during the Hikoi,
there is a significant number of external and internal communications that
mention the Hikoi. To locate the information you have requested, we have
carried out an email search of 12 key staff members who were involved in
work relating to the Hikoi for the time period between 1 October and 6
December 2024. This search returned 1464 items that mention the keyword
“hikoi”. Our email search is automated and not able to sort and filter
emails by categories, for example, only external or only internal
correspondence. They all would need to be manually opened one by one and
reviewed to determine whether or not they fall within the scope of this
part of your request. We consider that this exercise would impose an
unreasonable administrative burden on NZTA.

 

To enable us to respond to your request we invite you to narrow down the
scope of your request to a manageable level. Could you please let us know
what specific information about the Hikoi you are interested in and
suggest any keywords that we could use while searching emails. You may
also want to limit the number of inboxes searched to only 2-3 key people
(this will also likely reduce the number of duplicates as the same emails
may be sent/received and cc’ed to the same people).  

Knowing why this information is requested may also help us determine which
emails may fall within scope of your request. Although you are not obliged
to do so, it would be helpful if you could please indicate the reason for
your requesting this information.

 

We look forward to being able to assist once the scope of your request
above is refined.  It would be great to hear back from you by COB Monday
13 January.

 

Thank you.

 

Ngā mihi

 

Ministerial Services
Te Waka Kōtuia | Engagement & Partnerships
NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi

[1]Connect with us on Social Media

 

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Kia ora James

 

Thank you for your email below in response to our request to clarify what
specific information you are seeking with regards to “all communications”
with the Hikoi organisers and with police.

 

We consider that this has not been narrowed down to a manageable level and
is likely to be refused under substantial collation and research grounds
(section 18(f) of the OIA. As we advised you, we did an automated email
search of 12 key staff members’ inboxes, which returned 1464 items that
mention the keyword  “hikoi”.

 

To determine if the emails are in scope of your request we need to
manually open each of them, read through and see whether it is about the
hikoi in question, whether it is between NZTA and organisers, or between
NZTA and the police, and separate them from any internal emails mentioning
hikoi. The emails would then need to be redacted and reviewed.

 

To process such a large number of emails would place an unreasonable
administrative burden on NZTA and would have a significant and
unreasonable impact on the agency’s ability to carry out its other
operations. Therefore, we ask that you specify what specific information
you are looking for in these emails and provide us with keywords we could
use to search them. Please also consider reducing the number of key
people.

 

This refinement request applies to the “all communications” part only. We
look forward to being able to assist once this part of your request is
defined.

 

Ngâ mihi

 

Ministerial Services
Te Waka Kôtuia | Engagement & Partnerships
NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi

[1]Connect with us on Social Media

 

[2][IMG]

 

 

 

 

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