Requests lodged under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 104-04010000

Services Australia has a number of administrative access processes in place that allow for access to information without the need for a formal FOI request. All staff must help a person access information and/or documents where the secrecy provisions of the appropriate legislation and/or the Privacy Act 1988 allow, and where the information and/or documents are not otherwise sensitive.

If a customer requests access to their personal information all staff should first determine whether the information or document is available under the department’s administrative access processes. This is generally termed administrative release. See the related links section on this page for links to the administrative release of specific document or information types.

A person should not be asked to complete an FOI request where the information and/or documents can be routinely provided through the department’s administrative access schemes.

To request access to a document that cannot be provided under administrative access processes, a person can make a request in writing under the FOI Act.

If a person lodges an FOI request, it must be immediately forwarded to the FOI Team. For more information, see Step 6 in the Processing FOI requests table.

Time limits for processing FOI requests

If a person makes an FOI request, the FOI team must:

• acknowledge the request within 14 days of receipt within the department
• Notify the applicant of a decision on access to the documents within 30 days. This can be extended in certain circumstances (the FOI team will contact the applicant about any extension of time)

A person can apply under the FOI Act for amendment or annotation of their personal information held in agency records, where the information is incorrect, incomplete, out of date or misleading.

Where a FOI delegate makes a decision under the FOI Act to amend or annotate personal information the document containing the personal information is annotated. This is generally achieved with the assistance of network staff. All staff must be made aware of the FOI decision to amend or annotate document/s. For example, this may be achieved through the creation of a specific Display on Access (DOA) document.