List of briefings received as Minister of Police
Scott made this Official Information request to Poto Williams
The request was successful.
From: Scott
Dear Poto WIlliams,
I would like to make a request for a list of all briefings or reports the minister has received from Police since taking on the Minister of Police portfolio, including
1) The title of the briefing or report
2) The date received
3) The reference number
Yours faithfully,
Scott
From: P Williams (MIN)
Poto Williams
Kia Orana,
On behalf of Hon Poto Williams, Minister for Building and Construction,
Minister of Police, Associate Minister for Children and Associate Minister
for Housing (Public Housing), thank you for your email.
Please accept this email as acknowledgment of receipt of you
correspondence. Please be assured that all correspondence is read and
considered.
Requests to meet with the Minister or have the Minister attend an event
will be considered, and a staff member will get back to you as soon as
possible.
If you have a media query, please contact Georgina O'Reilly
georgina.o'[email address]
If your correspondence is to the Member of Parliament for Christchurch
East, please contact her electorate office at
[email address]
Please note that if your email expresses a personal view or is copied to
multiple Members of Parliament your views will be noted and there may be
no further correspondence.
Thank you for the taking the time to write.
Regards, Office of Hon Poto Williams
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From: P Williams (MIN)
Poto Williams
Tēnā koe Scott
Reference: OIA 2021-304
On behalf of Minister Poto Williams, thank you for your email of 15 November 2021 in which you submitted an Official Information Act request as follow:
"a request for a list of all briefings or reports the minister has received from Police since taking on the Minister of Police portfolio, including
1) The title of the briefing or report
2) The date received
3) The reference number."
Minister Williams is considering your request in accordance with the Act, and will respond in due course.
Ngā mihi,
Moana Fuli
Private Secretary, Executive Support | Office of Hon Poto Williams
DDI: 04 817 8724 | Email: [email address]
Private Bag 18041, Parliament Buildings, Wellington 6160, New Zealand
Authorised by Hon Poto Williams, Parliament Buildings, Wellington
Disclaimer: The information in this email (including attachments) is confidential and may be legally privileged. If an addressing or transmission error has misdirected this email, please notify the author by replying to this email and destroy the message. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, disclosure, copying or distribution is prohibited and may be unlawful.
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From: Scott
Dear Moana Fuli,
According to my calculations, this way due for a response by 13 December. Can you please provide me with an update on the status of this request?
Yours sincerely,
Scott
From: P Williams (MIN)
Poto Williams
Kia Orana,
On behalf of Hon Poto Williams, Minister for Building and Construction,
Minister of Police, Associate Minister for Children and Associate Minister
for Housing (Public Housing), thank you for your email.
Please accept this email as acknowledgment of receipt of you
correspondence. Please be assured that all correspondence is read and
considered.
Requests to meet with the Minister or have the Minister attend an event
will be considered, and a staff member will get back to you as soon as
possible.
If you have a media query, please contact the Minister’s Press Secretary.
If your correspondence is to the Member of Parliament for Christchurch
East, please contact her electorate office at
[email address]
Please note that if your email expresses a personal view or is copied to
multiple Members of Parliament your views will be noted and there may be
no further correspondence.
Thank you for the taking the time to write.
Regards, Office of Hon Poto Williams
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Moana Fuli
Kia ora Scott
Please find attached response to your OIA request from the Hon Poto Williams, Minister of Police.
Our sincere apologies for the delay in sending this to you.
Ngā mihi,
Moana
Moana Fuli
Private Secretary, Executive Support | Office of Hon Poto Williams
DDI: 04 817 8724 | Email: [email address]
Private Bag 18041, Parliament Buildings, Wellington 6160, New Zealand
Authorised by Hon Poto Williams, Parliament Buildings, Wellington
Disclaimer: The information in this email (including attachments) is confidential and may be legally privileged. If an addressing or transmission error has misdirected this email, please notify the author by replying to this email and destroy the message. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, disclosure, copying or distribution is prohibited and may be unlawful.
show quoted sections
Mark Hanna left an annotation ()
You may also want to cite the Ombudsman's guidance on refusals citing section 18(f) of the OIA if you complain. In particular, this part (pp8-9)
"Difficulties due to an agency’s own administrative failings
Agencies are required to create and maintain public records in an accessible form so they can be used for subsequent reference. Failure to comply with this requirement can make it more difficult to find and bring together information requested under the OIA or LGOIMA. Where the difficulty involved in meeting an official information request arises because of an agency’s own administrative failings, it may not be reasonable to refuse it on the grounds of substantial collation or research. The agency should consider whether it would be appropriate to allow some extra processing time in recognition of its own administrative failings"
https://www.ombudsman.parliament.nz/site...
From: Scott
Dear Moana Fuli,
I'm surpsrised to hear you say that you are refusing my request on the grounds that it would require "substantial collation," as it seems to me like briefings from a portfolio agency is something a minsiter's office should have available in an easily accessible format, and it therefore wouldn't be that difficult to extract the information I requested. I'm left feeling like it is an administrative failing on the part of your office that has resulted in me receiving an 18(f) refusal, rather than my request being in any way unreasonable.
In any case, it would have been much more helpful if you had got back to me earlier on in the process and asked me to refine my request, which might have resulted in me getting at least some of the information I was after. Instead, at the end of a month of waiting I am left with no information at all, which you must appreciate isn't a very satisfying outcome for me.
I intend to make a complaint to the Ombudsman for a review of your decision to make a 18(f) refusal, to see if for instance it might have been more appropriate to make an extension or ask me to refine my request instead.
In the meantime, I would like to make a follow up request:
I request a list of all briefings the minister has received from Police since the beginning of July. I would like this list to include the following information:
1) The title of the briefing
2) The date received
Yours sincerely,
Scott
From: Moana Fuli
Tēnā koe Scott
Reference: OIA 2021-356
On behalf of Minister Poto Williams, Minister of Police, thank you for your email of 20 December 2021 in which you submitted an Official Information Act request as follows:
I request a "list of all briefings the minister has received from Police since the beginning of July". I would like this list to include the following information:
1) The title of the briefing
2) The date received
Minister Williams is considering your request in accordance with the Act, and will respond in due course.
Ngā mihi,
Moana
Moana Fuli
Private Secretary, Executive Support | Office of Hon Poto Williams
DDI: 04 817 8724 | Email: [email address]
Private Bag 18041, Parliament Buildings, Wellington 6160, New Zealand
Authorised by Hon Poto Williams, Parliament Buildings, Wellington
Disclaimer: The information in this email (including attachments) is confidential and may be legally privileged. If an addressing or transmission error has misdirected this email, please notify the author by replying to this email and destroy the message. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, disclosure, copying or distribution is prohibited and may be unlawful.
show quoted sections
From: Scott
Dear Office of Poto Williams,
I am emailing to follow up on my request of 20 December, which by my calculations was due back no later than 8 February.
Can you please let me know when I can expect to receive your response?
Yours sincerely,
Scott
From: Moana Fuli
Kia ora Scott
Please find attached a response to your OIA request from Hon Poto Williams, Minister of Police.
Apology for the delay in sending this to you.
Ngā mihi,
Moana Fuli
Private Secretary, Executive Support | Office of Hon Poto Williams
DDI: 04 817 8724 | Email: [email address]
Private Bag 18041, Parliament Buildings, Wellington 6160, New Zealand
Authorised by Hon Poto Williams, Parliament Buildings, Wellington
Disclaimer: The information in this email (including attachments) is confidential and may be legally privileged. If an addressing or transmission error has misdirected this email, please notify the author by replying to this email and destroy the message. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, disclosure, copying or distribution is prohibited and may be unlawful.
show quoted sections
Mark Hanna left an annotation ()
It seems absolutely ridiculous that collating this information would take enough time to qualify for a s18(f) refusal.
I hope you will complain to the Ombudsman about both this unacceptable and unlawful delay and about this refusal. This information should be easy to retrieve, and if it would only take a long time because of the office of the Minister of Police's own administrative failings that alone is not an acceptable justification for a s18(f) refusal:
"Agencies are required to create and maintain public records in an accessible form so they can be used for subsequent reference. Failure to comply with this requirement can make it more difficult to find and bring together information requested under the OIA or LGOIMA. Where the difficulty involved in meeting an official information request arises because of an agency's own administrative failings, it may not be reasonable to refuse it on the grounds of substantial collation or research. The agency should consider whether it would be appropriate to allow some extra processing time in recognition of its own administrative failings"
https://www.ombudsman.parliament.nz/reso...
From: Police
Tēnā koe Scott,
Please find attached a response to your OIA request from Hon Poto
Williams.
Ngā mihi,
[1]cid:image003.jpg@01D5DA9C.EAF66FB0
Office of Hon Poto Williams
Minister for Building and
Construction | Minister of Police
Associate Minister for Children |
Associate Minister of Housing
(Public Housing)
Website: [2]www.Beehive.govt.nz
Private Bag 18041, Parliament
Buildings, Wellington 6160, New
Zealand
Authorised by Hon Poto Williams, Parliament Buildings, Wellington
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References
Visible links
2. http://www.beehive.govt.nz/
Mark Hanna left an annotation ()
It does not appear reasonable to me that Poto Williams has decided to release a list of long URLs as an image of text embedded in a PDF, which would require you or anyone else attempting to use the released information to either type out each URL by hand or use specialist Optical Character Recognition software to attempt to convert this image back into text.
Best practice would have been to release this information in an accessible form.
In 2018, Minister for Disability Issues Carmel Sepuloni wrote to me that "Providing OIA responses in accessible formats should be standard practice as part of an open and transparent government." Please feel free to quote this to Police Minister Poto Williams if you decide to ask for the information you have requested to be provided in an accessible format.
(Source of the quote published here: https://honestuniverse.com/2018/01/31/oi...)
I also note that the information you have requested has not been released. Rather, it seems this response was intended as a refusal under section 18(d) - that the information requested is or will soon be available. However, the response letter has not stated this explicitly as required under section 19(a)(i) of the OIA.
Things to do with this request
- Add an annotation (to help the requester or others)
- Download a zip file of all correspondence
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Mark Hanna left an annotation ()
I hope you will complain to the Ombudsman about the unlawful delay in this response.
Section 13 of the OIA also creates an obligation on agencies to provide reasonable assistance requesters, which I think the Minister should have provided here instead of refusing your request.
Reasonably, and particularly if the Minister of Police were trying to respond to your request as soon as reasonably practicable (as required by law), I would have expected them to respond to you within 7 working days (as per the limit in Section 15(1AB)(b) of the OIA) to ask for you to refine your request.
For example they could have asked you to limit the timeframe, so that they would be able to provide you with some of the information you seek instead of refusing your request outright citing Section 18(f).
Link to this