17 July 2024
Anon
[FYI request #25544 email]
Kia ora
Your Official Information Act request, reference: GOV-032633
Thank you for your email of 20 May 2024, asking for the fol owing information under the Official
Information Act 1982 (the Act):
On 20 May I requested ACC "include in your response the list of external clinical advisers ACC
contracts to review and provide comment on radiology images (MRI, CT, PET-CT) of the spine or
brain, given you have stated ACC does not employ or seek external clinical advice from neuro-
radiologists."
More precisely, when ACC seeks ECA for radiology images of the spine or brain (MRI, CT, PET-CT) ,
what is the scope of practice of the ECA's if not "neuro-radiology"?
I refer to ACC’s letter to you dated 5 July 2024, which explains in detail why ACC asked you on 24 June 2024
for information about yourself and the reasons for this official information request.
In your email of 3 July 2024, you declined to provide the further information ACC requested because you
did not consider ACC was entitled to ask for it. Since our second letter on 5 July, you have still not provided
the information sought.
Today is the last of the 20 working days in which ACC may respond to your official information request. For
the reasons set out below, ACC is declining your request.
ACC’s reasons now to decline your request are that:
• ACC has recently received a large number of closely related official information requests that also
appear to be made by or on behalf of the same person. At least 20 requests were made from your
account on FYI.org.nz to ACC in a short timeframe (between May and July 2024). Many of these
were about the same topics. Other requests written in the same way, about the same topics as
your requests, and sent around the same time, have been made from other anonymous FYI
accounts. In total, there were at least 40 requests made to ACC in a short timeframe.
• These information requests require considerable expense and effort for ACC to respond to. ACC
estimates that it is currently allocating more than the equivalent of one ful time employee to
respond to each of these requests separately, despite the fact that they seem closely related. It
would likely require further effort to produce al of the information sought in each of these
requests.
• This request seems to be one of these 40 related requests. Because you have not provided ACC
with information asked for to confirm whether your request is one of many related requests, ACC
has decided that your request is probably one of these many related requests.
GOV-032633 Page 1 of 2
• The way that you, or people acting for you, appear to have asked for a wide range of information in
many separate requests rather than include all questions in one request, interferes with ACC’s
ability to determine whether and how it might be able to apply various provisions of the Official
information Act to deal with your request. Those provisions relate to whether the requests taken as
a whole require substantial collation or research so as to:
o allow ACC to decline some or all of the requests under s18(f) of the Act;
o consider combining your request with any other requests made by you under s18A(2)
of the Act;
o ful y to consider fixing a charge for providing the documents concerned under s15 and
s18A(1) of the Act.
• Because your request appears to be part of a wider course of conduct making numerous official
information requests in a way that prevents ACC from applying the parts of the Official Information
Act that protect agencies from being put to unreasonable effort and expense in responding to
official information requests, ACC considers that your request is frivolous or vexatious in terms of
s18(h) of the Act.
• Your entire request is therefore refused.
If ACC is wrong and your request is not one among many related requests then please let me know
urgently, or if you prefer, take the issue to the Ombudsman in the way set out at the end of this message.
ACC sought the same information from each of the requestors in as many of the related requests as it has
been able to identify and has not received that information from any of them.
If you are not happy with this response
You can contact the Ombudsman vi
a [email address] or by phoning 0800 802 602.
Information about how to make a complaint is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz.
Ngā mihi
Christopher Johnston
Manager Official Information Act Services
Government Engagement
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