Year-long backlog for FOI reviews

Freedom of Information reviews are taking more than a year, some without even being allocated to a case officer.

Angelene Falk.

Freedom of Information reviews are taking more than a year, some without even being allocated to a case officer, because the federal government has not given the oversight agency enough funding.

The incoming Coalition government tried to abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner but was unsuccessful. It has since allowed its three separate commissioner functions to be done by one person, most ­recently Angelene Falk.

In a Senate estimates committee hearing on Tuesday, Ms Falk said there had been an 80 per cent ­increase in applications for review of FOI decisions over the past four years.

While the OAIC had sought to become more efficient, Ms Falk made clear “additional resources are required” to deal with the backlog and prevent a further blowout. Figures tabled in parliament this week show the OAIC last year finalised only 73.1 per cent of reviews within 12 months.

Ms Falk said the number of ­applications was increasing faster than the OAIC could clear cases, particularly those more than 12 months old, leaving a widening gap. “The only way in which the gap is to be bridged is additional ­resourcing,” Ms Falk told senators.

The OAIC budget allows for 19 case officers, however Ms Falk said she had asked government for funding to hire another nine plus capital costs.

“The government has ­acknowledged my request and (is) working through it in terms of normal budget processes,” she said.

The figures show departments are also more likely to delay making a decision — unlike the OAIC, they have a statutory time frame — and the proportion processed after the deadline increased from 15 per cent to 17 per cent.

Departments have also been refusing to process FOI requests, prompting Ms Falk to challenge them and call on the government to proactively release more information. Apart from personal privacy exemptions, the most commonly claimed exemptions to FOI release in 2018-19 were to protect certain operations of agencies (21 per cent), law enforcement and public safety (10 per cent), secrecy provisions (7 per cent) and deliberative processes (7 per cent) — all up on the previous year.

There was also a 12 per cent ­increase in internal review applications, which are handled by another FOI decision-maker within the agency, with almost half overall leading to a different outcome. The OAIC, in deciding external review applications, backed the previous decision in only 32 per cent of cases — down from 55 per cent the year before.

The Department of Home ­Affairs again received the most FOI requests, both from individuals seeking their own information and those seeking other, often policy-related information. The ­Department of Human Services was second overall, although the Department of Health received the second-highest number of non-personal requests.

Home Affairs also has a record of failing to decide FOI requests on time, with one in four coming after deadline last year. In the committee hearing on Tuesday, Labor’s Kim Carr asked whether this ­reflected “not just a culture of secrecy but a culture of lawlessness”.

Ms Falk was unable to answer the question and senior minister Marise Payne rejected it, saying only that “from time to time there are issues that are not necessarily desirable”. Senator Payne took on notice a question about the government’s intentions with the three commissioner positions.