Queensland Department of Education FOI officers and Office of the Information Commissioner, Queensland officers seem to employ abusive strategies to avoid searching for documents.
The "No Fishing Allowed" strategy.
There can be a very significant difference between the search response reported to you by an internal reviewer and the actual words written by the person whose documents are being "searched". An FOI applicant needs to make a second FOI application for the documents that record the "search" conducted by the internal reviewer to find out whether the internal reviewer has searched for the correct documents and reported his findings accurately.
The "Can We Deal With Your Second FOI Application First?" strategy.
In this disgracefully abusive strategy the FOI / Infocomm officer asks you if you will wait for your first FOI documents till a second, "broader" FOI application is finalised. They advise you that the first FOI documents may "turn up" in response to the second application.
You agree to wait.
Big, big mistake.
You wait for years.
No work is done on the second FOI application for months. The first FOI documents that you asked for do not "turn up" in response to the second application.
Five years later the FOI / Infocomm officers are still refusing to search for the first documents that you asked for.
And, in the meantime, public servants promote each other, change jobs or retire and the likelihood of the first documents ever being found is hugely reduced.
The "Two-Stage-Release" strategy.
In this strategy the FOI officer "allows" you to have a copy of an email from the bully administrator in which certain statements are made.
Then, months later, a second email is found. It appears to have been sent later on the same day as the first email - but who would really know? - In this second email significant changes are introduced into the Departmental "story".
Or
Version 2 of The "Two-Stage-Release" Strategy.
In version 2 of this strategy, a file of falsified documents is released. The target responds to these falsified documents. Months later a second file containing many of the same documents is released. But this file has been significantly re-organised and undated, unsigned, handwritten notes have been made on the original documents, introducing significant changes to the official "story".
The "Am I Understanding You Correctly?" strategy.
This Infocomm strategy is really draining and it can be used to delay your external review application for as long as a year. It consists of re-writing the applicant's external review application so that it is unrecognisable, then asking the applicant to confirm within the next eight days that this is the application that they are making or they will lose all of their FOI rights.
The external review applicant then has to "drop everything" and struggle for hours to find any relationship between their own original application and this strange document.
Finally the external review applicant comes up with Hybrid Version 2 of their own application. They mail it off and hear nothing for months. They receive no documents.
Suddenly yet another unrecognisable version of their external review application arrives. And again they are asked to confirm in the next eight days this is the application that they want to make or they will lose all of their FOI rights.
Again the external review applicant has to "drop everything" and work for hours, comparing their own original application with this unrecognisable document.
Finally they come up with Hybrid Version 3 of their external review application. They mail it off and again hear nothing for months.
Finally one or two documents arrive.
- This continual re-writing of applications must consume a lot of the time of the FOI and Infocomm officers. I would respectfully suggest that Infocomm officers consider simplifying the external review process for the applicant, be more accepting of layman's concepts and original language, and thereby reduce their own workload.
Actually, I think that the Infocomm officers are so highly qualified that they genuinely do not appreciate the demands that the FOI process makes on the skills of an ordinary person. They can become a little 'snappy' and impatient with the bumbling efforts of applicants at times.
I have a good Master's degree in linguistics and I have found making FOI applications demanding.
It must be very, very difficult for anybody who is less literate or who has less time.
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