2929 July 2024
Bruce
[FYI request #27442 email]
Kia ora
Your Official Information Act request, reference: GOV-033457
Thank you for your email of 1 July 2024, asking for the following information under the Official Information
Act 1982 (the Act):
In response GOV-032950, ACC provided a copy of the document titled “Annual Practising Certificate
Review Process Clinical Staff at ACC.” That document was updated in August 2022.
I request copies of ACC’s documents for the process for reviewing practicing certificates of clinical
and claim assessment staff from 2000 to August 2022.
For each document provided, please specify the dates in which that process document was in effect.
I refer to ACC’s letter to you of 22 July 2024 asking you for information about yourself and the reasons for
this official information request. To date, you have not provided the information sought.
Today is the last of the 20 working days in which ACC may respond to your official information request
without a time extension. 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 apparently closely related official information requests
that also appear to be made by or on behalf of the same person. There have been at least 40
requests over the past two months.
• 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 full time employee to
respond to each of these requests separately, despite the fact that they seem closely related.
It would likely require even more expense and effort to produce all of the information sought in
each of these requests.
• Unfortunately, your request seems to be one of these 40 related requests. Because you have not
provided ACC information to confirm that your request was made acting only for yourself and your
own reasons, ACC has decided that your request is probably one of these many related requests.
• 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 fully to consider fixing a charge for providing the documents concerned under s15 and
s18A(1) of the Act.
GOV-033457 Page 1 of 2
• 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 you are not happy with this response, you can contact the Ombudsman via
[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
GOV-033457 Page 2 of 2