5 April 2023
Lance O’Riley
[FYI request #22040 email]
Tēnā koe Lance O’Riley
On 8 March 2023
, you emailed the Ministry of Social Development (the
Ministry) requesting, under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act), the
following information:
•
All correspondence and documentation that discusses or mentions my
official information act request made to MSD on December 20, 2022.
This includes anything that would reasonably be considered in relation
to this request. This is regardless of if it specifically refers to the
request, or just the information in general.
Forty email threads were identified in scope of your request, however, many
of these contain repeated emails. As such, I have decided to provide you with
a summary of the relevant documents (section 16 of the Act refers). This has
been done to ensure the requested information is provided to you in the most
helpful format possible.
Please find below an outline of the timeline and process your request followed,
from the date the Ministry received it.
20 December 2022
The Ministry received your request and assigned it to a Ministerial and
Executive Services (MaES) Advisor to prepare for response.
9 January 2023
The request was commissioned out to the relevant business units and a
commissioning meeting for all involved business units was scheduled shortly
after.
13 January 2023
Following the commissioning meeting, a summary email of the approach was
sent out to business units who had attended. This summary confirmed:
• Service Delivery (SD) would sign the response out.
• ‘52-week income summary’ would refer to situations where the Ministry
asks for income to confirm entitlement.
• The response would be kept high level as it would be published on the
FYI website.
• Client Service Support (CSS) and Client Service Delivery (CSD) were
responsible for locating guidance or training about income summaries
and overpayments.
• Operational Policy (Op Pol) would provide background information about
debt write-offs and calculating overpayments.
• No further action required for Business Intelligence (BI), as the
requested data would be refused under section 18(f) due to the level of
manual collation required.
• The Client Advocacy and Review team (CAR) and Integrity and Debt
team would be looped in to provide their perspectives.
26 January 2023
People Group advised there was no specific training materials relating to 52-
week income summaries and overpayments.
14 February 2023
Op Pol provided their information for the response, which included questions
1b, 1c, 2b, 4c, and 6a.
24 February 2023
In regard to questions 4d, 4e, 4f, 4g, and 4h, the CAR team advised:
• They only hold Review of Decision (ROD) data from 2015 onwards.
• Data Management and Information Delivery (DMaID) would need to be
contacted to provide data from prior to 2015.
• Responding to questions 4f, 4g, and 4h would involve going through
ROD cases individually and as such, would likely need to be refused
under section 18(f) due to manual collation.
28 February 2023
MaES received the post-2015 data from the CAR team for question 4d.
The initial draft of the response was sent to Op Pol, People Group, SD, CSD,
and CSS for review. Following this, feedback was provided by CSD, Op Pol and
SD.
1 March 2023
DMaID advised that BI was the appropriate business unit to respond to the
above questions.
MaES contacted BI regarding data for questions 4d and 4e, for years prior to
2016. BI confirmed that they had provided similar data to 4d in a previous OIA
response, and they would look into whether they could provide the information
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requested. It was noted that question 4e would likely need to be refused under
manual collation due to the need to go into individual case files to determine
the outcome.
2 March 2023
The response was sent for peer review in MaES. The Advisor drafting the
response noted the issues with determining the correct business unit to provide
ROD data, and that the data had not yet been provided.
7 March 2023
BI provided the requested data for question 4d.
The response completed manager review by the Manager, Official Information.
The response was sent to SD, BI, CSS and Op Pol for review of each unit’s
contribution.
8 March 2023
BI, CSS, and Op Pol approved the response and SD provided their final
signatory. The Media team were sent a copy of the response.
Please note, some information has been withheld from this summary under
section 9(2)(g)(i) of the Act to protect the effective conduct of public affairs
through the free and frank expression of opinions. I believe the greater public
interest is in the ability of individuals to express opinions in the course of their
duty.
Further to this, you will find attached the document
OIA Report and Risk
Assessment O'Riley – 20230308 which was completed alongside your
response letter for your previous request. The purpose of the Report and Risk
Assessment is to provide background information to the request, outline which
parts of the response the Ministry can or cannot respond to and why, and
outline any risks associated with the release of the information. This document
is not provided to the requestor and is intended to be kept as a record-keeping
document regarding the Ministry’s decisions made on requests.
The principles and purposes of the Official Information Act 1982 under which
you made your request are:
• to create greater openness and transparency about the plans, work and
activities of the Government,
• to increase the ability of the public to participate in the making and
administration of our laws and policies and
• to lead to greater accountability in the conduct of public affairs.
If you wish to discuss this response with us, please feel free to contact
[MSD request email].
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If you are not satisfied with this response, you have the right to seek an
investigation and review by the Ombudsman. Information about how to make
a complaint is available
at www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or 0800 802 602.
Ngā mihi nui
Sarah Quigan
Manager
Official Information
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Document Outline
