Dear St Patrick's Catholic School (Te Awamutu),

I am requesting under the OIA the following:
1. Minutes from St Patrick's Board of Trustee ("Board") meetings from the last eight months including the most recent meeting at the time of your response if that meeting occurs after this request, including minutes from any Board subcommittees in the last three months and most recent as above.
2. St Patrick's school/board policies regarding romantic relationships between staff members, and regarding school staff codes of conduct, and regarding misconduct, and regarding obligations and expectations around supporting special character.
3. Information and correspondence about any and all complaints against or concerns about members, or the conduct of members, of school staff or Board, including teaching, non-teaching, and leadership staff members.
4. Reports (extra to usual regular reports) or investigations written as a result of Board business in last six months including any written between date of this request and date of your response.
5. As far as possible, notes of, or notes of recollections of, any conversation of Board members or staff about Board or Board subcommittee business in the last six months.

I understand that you will have obligations under the relevant privacy legislation and may need to redact some parts of some documents.

I request this information in digital form.

I look forward to your prompt response.

Yours faithfully,
Mr Harris.

Dear Anna Gallien,

Thanks for your reply and the information you've provided already.

I'm a New Zealand citizen resident in New Zealand.
Can I draw your attention to this extract of the Office of the Ombudsman's guide to making OIA requests: "Agencies should only query eligibility if there is a genuine need to do so, and they should be mindful of their obligation to provide reasonable assistance to requesters. Time taken to confirm eligibility may mean less time is available for processing a request."

The legislation doesn't oblige a requester to provide a reason for his request. I acknowledge your query but respectfully decline to answer it.

Regarding a timeframe for complaints, a similar timeframe as in my other requests will be ok: complaints within the last six months.

Could you provide an estimate of costs involved and an idea of the itemised breakdown of those forecasted costs please.

Yours sincerely,
Mr Harris

Dear Anna Gallien
thanks for your reply.
I'm not a board member.

Yours sincerely
Mr Harris

Dear Anna Gallien,
Thanks for your letter.
Can you point out to me exactly where I can find the requested information about policies please? I don't consider a link to all the policies on your website as meeting the request in item 2. of my first letter. Please provide the titles of the specific documents where I'll find all the requested information.
I also point out that minutes of meetings not open to the public - that is, in-committee sections of regular Board meetings - are subject to OIA requests, and I'm asking again for these minutes. They can be redacted for privacy.
I point out that the OIA considers "information not yet written down" - that is, recollections, is consider information available for release to the public. If no minutes were recorded for in-committee parts of committee meetings at the time (which would be an oversight) they can now be written down and sent through.
Further, I remind you that correspondence with the Board about complaints/concerns about staff from members of the community are also subject to OIA and can also be satisfactorily redacted for privacy, and then released.
You mention bona fides - in releasing to me the appendix with two complaints you do indicate that you are sufficiently satisfied that I am a NZer and am entitled to this release; the method of using the FYI site is irrelevant.
Thanks for your time and, as a member of a government agency, your commitment to the principles of the OIA.
I point out that we are beyond 20 working days as the timeframe provided in legislation to meet a request under the OIA.
Yours sincerely,

Mr Harris

Dear Anna Gallien,
Please respond to the previous message which points out that you haven't met the request in an appropriate way: one link to a dozen or more documents does not facilitate access to the information requested.

Yours sincerely,
Mr Harris

Dear Anna Gallien,
Thank you for your reply.
Can I point out that the agency you represent is bound by the requirements of the OIA, namely to release requested information within 20 working days. You are currently in breach of that legislation. I encourage you to promptly provide the information requested, as merely sending a link as you have done (a link which, further, is broken and only returns a 404) to a raft of policies, most irrelevant to my request, and expecting me to find the information somewhere amongst them, is a failure to respond to my request for specific policies.

Further to your reply today, no agency can ever be sure of what a requester will do with information released by that agency and how that requester may or may not make it public, but that is irrelevant: St Patrick's BOT is required to make official information available when requested regardless of who asks for it or what they may do with it. So I have no duty to "address your concerns" however I will say here that I see this information to be in the public interest, particularly to those Kiwis interested in education provided by state and state-integrated schools, and governance and administration in those same schools, and how schools respond to concerns or questions from the community.

You mentioned earlier the St Patrick School's values of faith, service, hope and love: being transparent, and meeting obligations under the OIA, are a part of those values even if - as can perhaps be inferred from the tone and content of your most recent correspondence - the Board is now receiving legal advice suggesting it should play hardball here.

I'd rather not take this to the Ombudsman but if necessary that option is there of course.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Harris