Freedom of Information

Freedom of Information

Note: If you do not understand some words in this document, you can find the meanings on the DPP website under ‘Commonly Used Terms’. Please click the Easy Read/Plain English version.

See information

Everyone has a right to see information from the ACT government. You can get access to:

• Personal details about you
• Documents about government rules and laws
• Details about government programs
• Ways the government spends money
• Information on how agencies work
• Research that was used in making choices in government

Open access

There is a government document called the ‘Freedom of Information Act 2016’. This document means that places like the DPP have to give you information if you ask for it. These places are called government agencies.

Sometimes information you are looking for is already public. This means you do not have to ask for it. You can check if it is already public on the Open Access Website.

Ask for access

If you would like information on a case, instead of doing a formal ‘Freedom of Information Request’, please contact our office first. Most of the time it is easier and quicker if you do it this way.

You can contact us through these ways:

Mail address: FOI Contact Officer, GPO Box 595, Canberra City, ACT 2601

Email: foiactdpp@act.gov.au

Phone: 02 6207 5399

Fax: 02 6207 5428

Formal Freedom of Information (FOI) request

If you have contacted the DPP and you still can’t find what you need, you can ask in writing for information. This is called a formal request.

You need to have these things in your letter:

• Clear details about the information you need
• An email or postal address so we can contact you back
• Proof of ID if you are asking for personal information. This could be something like a driver’s licence or proof of age card.

If you have hired a lawyer or someone to represent you to ask for this information, please also send us these details. You will have to tell us they are representing you.

You can send this request to the email or postal address above.

When we get your request, we will have a look at it. If we have all the information we need and it is a reasonable request, we will start working on it. We will let you know if we need more information.

Working on your request

Once we get your formal request, we will let you know in writing within 10 weekdays (Monday – Friday).

We will let you know within 30 weekdays if we are saying yes or no to the request.

Please know that we might need more time for some requests. These could be things like:

• If the information you are wanting has details about someone else in it. We will need to ask them if we can give it to you first.
• If your request is complicated

When we work on your request, we might:

• Give you all the document/s you asked for
• Give you some of the document/s you asked for
• Give you none of the document/s you asked for
• Ask another agency to get these documents if we do not have them.

Outcome

After we have worked on your request, we will send you a letter telling you the outcome and the reasons for this outcome. This letter will tell you what documents we will or will not give to you and why we could not give them to you. If you have any questions, you can contact us.

This letter will also tell you:

• Any money you will have to pay for the request
• That the request and the outcome will be on our records and can be seen by the public
• Your rights if you want to have the request looked at again

Costs

You do not have to pay any money if you are writing a Freedom of Information request. You also do not have to pay if you are asking for documents that are about you. You might need to pay some money if the information you want is about other people or more than just your personal information. We will let you know if you need to pay any money.

These are some things you might need to pay for:

Getting rid of costs

You can ask for these costs to go away if you do not have enough money, or if you think the information would be useful to the public. You will need to tell us why you would like the costs to go away and might need to give us some proof of this.

Our office has to get rid of the cost if:

• The information you wanted was public but it is now private
• The information would be very helpful to the public
• The person asking for the information has a concession card and shows they are connected to the information
• The person asking for the information is from a company that is not-for-profit (does not make money) and the request is about this company
• The person asking for the information is a member of Parliament

Changing personal information

If you think the details that we have about you are not right or old details, you can ask us to change this for you.

Please send us an email or letter with this information:

• Enough detail so we know what information needs to be changed
• How it is wrong or old
• How we can change it
• An email or postal address so we can contact you back

If you would like your details changed we will work on this within 20 weekdays. If we say no to your request, we will contact you and ask if you can give us more information. Then we will choose yes or no for the last time. You can send your request by email to foiactdpp@act.gov.au or the postal address which is on page 1 of this document.

When we choose yes or no to changing your details, we will send you a letter saying why we chose this and give you some information if you want to ask us again.

Review/Appeal

If you are not happy with this outcome, you can ask the ACT Ombudsman to look into our choice. This is called a review or appeal. The Ombudsman is an office that looks into complaints about government agencies. You will have to write to ACT Ombudsman within 20 weekdays after the choice is shown on the DPP website. It will be shown on the normal webpage under ‘Freedom of Information’ in the ‘Disclosure Log’.

Disclosure Log

The DPP has to keep a record of which information is given to people through the Freedom of Information requests. This is the law and is mentioned is a document called the ‘Freedom of Information Act 2016’.

Information given to people through a request is put in this disclosure record between 3 and 10 weekdays after we have made our choice and after you have been told of this choice.

The record, which is called a ‘disclosure log’, needs to have:

• The document you have written to ask for the information. This is called the FOI application.
• The letter we have given you letting you know our choice. This is called the decision notice.
• The information you requested, that we have now given you.

If the information you ask for is personal details about you, we will not put this on the record on our website.