Justice Centre | 19 Aitken Street
DX SX10088 | Wel ington
T 04 918 8800 |
F 04 918 8820
[email address] | www.justice.govt.nz
7 June 2023
Shane Gibson
[FYI request #22649 email]
Our ref: OIA 104371
Tēnā koe Shane
Official Information Act request: Cost for suppliers for the 2021/2022 financial year
Thank you for your email of 2 May 2023, requesting, under the Of icial Information Act 1982,
information regarding the cost for suppliers for the 2021/2022 financial year. Specifically, you
requested:
I would like an extract of the annual amount spent with all suppliers for the 2021/2022
financial year.
I would like this data in an open format, csv or json formats would be suitable.
I would like the following details provided:
- Supplier Name
- Suppliers NZBN number (if available)
- Total Amount Spent
The information you have requested does not currently exist in the format you have
requested. Providing this information to you in the format you have requested would require
substantial manual collation. Accordingly, I am refusing your request under section 18(f) of
the Act, as the information requested cannot be made available without substantial collation.
Using a definition of ‘supplier’ to mean ‘companies and organisations the Ministry received
goods and services from’, we would need to check records to confirm which payees and
invoices meet this definition and can thereby be treated as in scope of your request.
The Ministry’s financial system, Technology One, enables us to record the following criteria:
• payments to each supplier/reimbursement to staff,
• the New Zealand Business Number in instances where the supplier has shown it on
a tax invoice and our it was entered into our finance system,
• the value of payments.
While the Ministry’s financial system can produce the raw data, getting it ready for release
would require us to manually review and cross-reference 38,946 invoices to more than 4,600
payees to identify any non-suppliers in the data, for example, government agencies,
reimbursements to staff, court and tribunal operational costs, including payments to jurors.
The task of checking these records can only be undertaken manually and completed by our
Finance team as it requires professional knowledge and expertise. We would also need to
verify this information with the business units that undertook the original purchases, to
Justice Centre | 19 Aitken Street
DX SX10088 | Wel ington
T 04 918 8800 |
F 04 918 8820
[email address] | www.justice.govt.nz
confirm specific details. To that end, we consider undertaking the above actions to be an
extensive task, amounting to substantial collation.
We have considered consulting with you to determine whether the scope of the request
could be refined to avoid refusing your request. However, narrowing the scope for the
function of the supplier would stil require cross-referencing more than 4,600 data entries
and would not have resolved the difficulty.
While I am refusing your request, I wish to inform you of information already publicly
available that may be of interest to you. As part of the Annual Review process, the Ministry
publishes the amount spent for all contractors and consultants. The 2021/22 Annual Review
appendices including the contractor and consultant spend is available on the Parliament
website here: parliament.nz/resource/en-
NZ/53SCJU_EVI_130070_JU234203/b555fbbcb26367bdf6a773ffa593174e9c9a044b
If you require any further information, please contact Media & Social Media Manager Joe
Locke at [email address].
Please note that this response, with your personal details removed, may be published on the
Ministry website at: justice.govt.nz/about/official-information-act-requests/oia-responses/.
If you are not satisfied with this response, you have the right to make a complaint to the
Of ice of the Ombudsman under section 28(3) of the Act. The Office of the Ombudsman may
be contacted by email to [email address] or by phone on 0800 802 602.
Nāku noa, nā
Anouk Alexander
Deputy Secretary, Strategy, Governance and Finance
