Dear Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade,

Background
In 2015, the United Nations, including New Zealand, signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

SDG 16 is to "Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels" (https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sd...)

Within SDG 16 is target 16.10, "Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements."

One of the designated indicators is SDG 16.10.2, "Number of countries that adopt and implement constitutional, statutory and/or policy guarantees for public access to information."

OIA Request
Under the OIA, I would like to request:

(a) a copy of all reports (including briefings/aide memoire etc) produced for officials or Ministers on SDG 16.10.2;

(b) any reports on efforts made to assess and report on implementation of SDG 16.10.2; and

(c) any correspondence (including emails) and notes of meetings with officials in other departments (most likely, but not limited to, Treasury and Statistics NZ) on how progress on SDG 16.10.2 may be incorporated in to 'Indicators Aotearoa New Zealand' and/or 'The Living Standards Framework'.

If any of this information is not recorded in writing, please make and supply me with a written note of the information on this topic known to Ministry officials, as the Ombudsmen have made clear that that 'information held' by a department includes unrecorded information held by officials in their heads.

As per section 16 of the OIA, I would like to receive this information as electronic attachments to your email responding to this request. Also as per section 16, my preference is to receive any documents in the native file format in which they were created and are held by the Ministry, rather than rasterised/image-only PDF files.

If you decide that any part of the OIA provides a ground for withholding information when you respond to this request, please could you - as per section 19(a) of the OIA - provide details of the reasons in support of those grounds, including the public interest factors considered by the Ministry under section 9(1).

In addition, in the event that the Ministry decides that there is reason under the OIA to withhold some information in full, please provide me with a list of all the documents it has determined fall within the scope of my request.

Finally, when responding to these requests, please could you provide me with a list of the search terms used by Ministry officials when searching for information within the scope of the requests detailed above.

Yours faithfully,

Andrew Ecclestone