March 9, 2018 4:00pm by David Farrar

OIA response times improve

The latest statistics cover 111 different agencies who collectively completed 21,232 requests between July and December 2017, a 1.1% increase on the 20,996 requests for half of 2016/17.

Agencies responded to 20,236, or 95.3%, of these requests on time. This represents a 2.3 percentage point improvement on 2016/17 and is 7.7 percentage points better than 2015/16.

That is a significant improvement and good to see. I’m hearing that under the new Government lots of deadlines are being missed, so it will be very interesting to see the 2018 data.

While responding to OIA requests on time will remain a priority, Mr Hughes said agencies could now put more emphasis on proactive releasing information and publishing completed requests on their websites.

“New Zealanders expect government agencies to be open and transparent,” Mr Hughes said. “The spirit of the Act is about making official information more freely available, which promotes good government and trust and confidence in the Public Service. I expect agencies will increase their efforts to proactively release information and publish their completed requests.”

Only 16 agencies published OIA responses on their websites.

I’d like all agencies to do so, or the Government to set up a central site such as oia.govt.nz where all responses are published a week or so after being sent to the original requester.

71 complaints were effectively upheld, where decisions were found to be deficient. That is of 218 that went to a final decision so around a third of contested decisions are successfully appealed to the Ombudsman.