45 Pipitea Street
11 November 2021
Wel ington
Phone: 0800 25 78 87
dia.govt.nz
Victoria Muninn
[FYI request #16957 email]
Tēnā koe Victoria,
Thank you for your email of 30 September 2021, transferred from the Ministry of
Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), requesting under the Official
Information Act 1982 (the Act):
‘…all relevant documentation - papers, discussion documents, meeting notes,
emails, or any other relevant information - about implemented and planned co-
funding arrangements with Microsoft that the ministry has entered into since the
last general election.
Please include a list of all beneficiary organisations, companies, NGOs, or
col ectives, or co-partners, for each co-funding arrangement, as well as their
financial plans and data on Microsoft and the Ministry's provision of funds to them.
Please note when the Ministry first entered into discussions with Microsoft about
co-funding arrangements, and include any strategy documents or discussion
documents that arose from those discussions (also providing those).
If there are overarching documents about this new social and economic model that
the Ministry has produced, or has been guided by and produced by another
Ministry, business or institution, and list the names of those documents, briefly
describing the contents of each.
Finally, please provide a list of all of the other technology companies that the
Ministry has discussed the same co-funding arrangements with.’
As per MBIE’s correspondence to you on 21 October 2021, your request was
transferred to the Department for a response. I have interpreted your request to refer
specifically to ‘implemented and planned co-funding arrangements’. On that basis, the
Department of Internal Affairs (the Department) has no implemented and planned co-
funding arrangements with Microsoft. Therefore, I am refusing your request under
section 18(e) of the Act as the information requested does not exist or, despite
reasonable efforts to locate it, cannot be found.
The Department does have a commercial relationship with Microsoft, that supports
agencies’ use of Microsoft’s products and services in line with the Government’s
Procurement
policies.
More information is available here
at:
www.digital.govt.nz/products-and-services/products-and-services-a-z/microsoft-
cloud-software-and-services-agreement/.
We intend to publish this letter to www.dia.govt.nz, with your personal details removed.
Publishing responses increases the availability of information to the public and is
consistent with the purpose of the Act to enable effective participation in the making
and administration of laws and policies, and to promote the accountability of Ministers
and officials.
You have the right, under section 28(3) of the Act, to seek an investigation and review
of this decision by the Office of the Ombudsman. Information is available on the
website www.ombudsman.parliament.nz. Alternatively, you can phone 0800 802 602
or email [email address].
Naku noa, nā
Anita Balakrishnan
Tumuaki | Director Ministerial, Monitoring, and Capability Group
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