Level 2, Wintec House
Cnr Anglesea and Nisbet St.
Hamilton 3204
0800 86 22 84
info@tepūkenga.ac.nz
tepūkenga.ac.nz
20 June 2024
Amy F Taylor
By email:
[FYI request #27231 email]
Tēnā koe Amy
Request under the Official Information Act 1982
Thank you for your email of 12 June 2024, requesting the fol owing information from UCOL ǀ Te
Pūkenga – New Zealand Institute of Skil s and Technology (UCOL):
I request any and all correspondence, memos, or documents relating to the Association of Students
@ UCOL (AS@U) and/or the Students Association of UCOL, including but not limited to:
1. Emails, letters, or other written communications between UCOL staff, faculty, or
administration discussing AS@U or the Students Association of UCOL.
2. Meeting minutes, agendas, or summaries where AS@U or the Students Association of UCOL
were discussed or mentioned.
3. Any policies, guidelines, or official documents governing the relationship between UCOL and
AS@U or the Students Association of UCOL.
4. Any financial records, budgets, or funding agreements related to AS@U or the Students
Association of UCOL.
5. Any reports, surveys, or evaluations assessing the effectiveness or impact of AS@U or the
Students Association of UCOL.
Please provide documents created within the past five years.
This letter provides a formal decision on your request under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA).
Substantial collation and research
Section 18(f) of the OIA provides that a request may be refused as
the information requested cannot
be made available without substantial collation or research.
Your request encompasses a large quantity of information to be searched, reviewed and collated. As
an example, in relation to your first request for emails, letters, or other written communications
between UCOL staff, faculty, or administration discussing AS@U or the Students Association of UCOL
- UCOL currently has 435 kaimahi (staff) by headcount, not inclusive of kaimahi who have left UCOL
employment within the past five years. To fulfil your first request, we would need to conduct a search
of al communications sent internal y by these 435 kaimahi, plus those who have left UCOL
employment, for the period 2019-present. Al communications found to contain some reference to
AS@U or the Students Association of UCOL would then need to be individual y reviewed, redactions
considered, and approved for release.
Given the scope of your request, the amount of resource required to process it, we carefully looked
into the option of charging for making the requested information available, under sections 15(1A)
and (2) of the OIA. Agencies are able to charge for staff time, including search and retrieval, collation,
research (reading and reviewing to identify information), editing (excising or redacting information
to be withheld), and reasonable peer review of these tasks. It became clear that the charge was itself
extraordinarily large and even if you were to agree to payment, the work to carry out the mahi (work)
would entail a significant and unreasonable impact on UCOL’s ability to carry out its other day to day
operations.
The decision
Taking the above points into consideration, we have decided to refuse your request under section
18(f) of the OIA as the information requested cannot be made available without substantial col ation
or research.
If you wish to discuss this decision and response with us, please feel free to contact Johnny
Tramoundanas-Can, Government Relations Director,
at [Te Pūkenga—New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology request email]. We also invite you to
consider rescoping your request and submitting a new application.
You have the right to make a complaint to the Ombudsman under section 28(3) of the OIA if you are
not happy with this response. Information about how to do this is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or by cal ing 0800 802 602.
We may publish our OIA responses and the information contained in our reply to you on our website.
Before publishing we will remove any personal or identifiable information.
Ngā mihi
Gus Gilmore
Tumuaki | Chief Executive
2
