16 May 2018
Mark Hanna
Email:
[FYI request #7635 email]
Dear Mr Hanna
Ref: 0051785
Official Information Act Request
Thank you for your request of 17 April 2018, which we are responding to under the Official
Information Act 1982 (the Act). Your request seeks the following details about official
information requests that ACC responded to in the period 1 July to 30 December 2018:
1. The date on which the request was received.
2. The date on which the request was answered.
2a If the request was answered on the last allowable day, the time at which the
request was answered
3. Whether or not the request was extended under section 15A of the OIA.
3a If the request was extended, the date on which notice of the extension was sent to
the requester.
3b. If the notice of extension was sent to the requester on the last allowable day, the
time at which the notice of extension was sent to the requester.
3c. If the request was extended, the duration of the extension.
4.
The outcome of the request (e.g. all information released, transferred to another
agency).
Our response
We take very seriously our legislative responsibilities to provide official information, including
providing information as soon as practicable and assisting the requestor receive relevant
information. The latter includes extracting information even when it is not readily accessible
and providing similar information when the information requested is not held.
Commentary on timeliness of ACC responses to your requests
We note that the requests you make tend to be for data that is not already to hand and is
extracted by another part of the business. As such your requests will often take longer to
complete than most requests we receive.
Background to information provided
We have extracted the following information from our records.
In the period 1 July 2017 to 30 December, we completed 418 official information requests.
We answered 81 requests (18%) on the twentieth day after ACC received the request. We
extended the response timeframe for 33 requests (8%), and 10 of those were extended on
the last day. You will appreciate on occasion circumstances require that we extend at a later
stage if unexpected issues arise during the process of preparing the response. We aim to
accurately estimate the additional time needed to complete a response so that the requestor
has some certainty about when they will receive the information. ACC endeavours to provide
a response as soon as it is possible.
Dates and times of official information decisions and extensions
The data for questions 1, 2, 3, 3a and 3c is in the attached appendix. Please note that this
information is not held in a way that it can be extracted electronically and has been
specifically prepared for you.
With respect to questions 2a and 3b, we do not specifically record the time of day when the
decision or notice of extension was sent. In order to provide this information, we would need
to manually search the relevant emails.
This would involve an extensive manual search through our official information files, as well
as searches for some individual emails through our email archives. Due to this we decline
this part of your request under the substantial collation and research grounds provided by
section 18(f) of the Act.
However, to assist you, we have manually extracted available information on the timeliness
of notice of extension letters. As noted above, for the period 1 July to 30 December 2017,
there were 10 official information requests which we extended on the last date. Of those 10
requests, we have a notice of extension email on file for six. The times of day that those
emails were sent are as follows:
Extension
Time notice
Date received
Date replied
Due date
Comments
date
sent
23-May
02-Aug
02-Aug
EXT (30 DAYS)
21-Jun
4:04pm
26-Sep
23-Nov
23-Nov
EXT (20 DAYS)
25-Oct
6:56pm
28-Jun
08-Aug
09-Aug
EXT (10 DAYS)
26-Jul
1:20pm
07-Sep
12-Oct
19-Oct
EXT (10 DAYS)
05-Oct
4:07pm
25-Oct
04-Dec
06-Dec
EXT (10 DAYS)
22-Nov
9:13am
03-Oct
22-Nov
22-Nov
EXT (15 DAYS)
01-Nov
3:31pm
Request outcomes
The information for question 4 could only be produced by a review of all our decision letters,
which are held on individual files, and then categorising these. This, in our view, would
amount to creating information. Noting this, we decline this part of your request as the
information requested does not exist. This decision is made under section 18(e) of Act.
While we do not have information on decision outcomes that can be readily collated, we have
included in the appendix information that indicates if a request has been extended,
transferred or withdrawn. This is provided in the comments column of the attached table.
ACC is happy to answer your questions If you have any questions about the information provided, I can be contacted via email at
[email address]. You also have the right to make a complaint to the Office of the Ombudsman. You can call
them on 0800 802 602, 9am to 5pm weekdays, or write to
The Office of the Ombudsman, PO
Box 10 152, WELLINGTON 6143.
Yours sincerely
Government Engagement and Support