Police received more OIA complaints than anyone else
Tuesday, 31 January 2017
Police received more complaints about their transparency than any other government agency in the latter half of 2016.
New statistics released Tuesday show the total amount of complaints received by the Chief Ombudsman in the second half of 2016 in relation to Official Information Act (OIA) requests.
OIA requests are made by the media, opposition political parties, and members of the public and must be responded to by government bodies.
Any information that the government agency holds and is not confidential legally must be released within 20 working days to the requester. Government bodies can ask for an extension or charge a fee for administrative efforts.
If a requester feels their request has been ignored or not properly addressed they can complain to the Chief Ombudsman.
This is the first time the Chief Ombudsman has released such statistics.
The data shows police have received far and away the most complaints of any agency, with 99 complaints over the half-year period.
The Ombudsman found deficiencies present in 15 of the cases complained about. Most of these were 'delay deemed refusal' cases, where police failed to respond within the specified 20 working days to a request.
The Department of Corrections and the Ministry for Social Development were next in line, with 46 and 40 complaints respectively.
'New Zealand is doing well and our decision to release this data is part of a wider push for greater transparency in the operation of the OIA,' Chief Ombudsman Judge Boshier said in a release.
'Agencies will try harder to get it right if they know that information about their compliance with the OIA will be published.'
POLICE NOT SLOWEST, RECEIVED OVER 11,000 REQUESTS
Police received the most complaints but were not the slowest agency to respond to OIA request.
Wider OIA statistics revealed simultaneously by the State Services Commission covering the year financial year 2015/16 showed Police handled 78.3 percent of their requests in the legally mandated timeframe.
While this rate was low, it was higher than several other agencies - including the Te Puni Kokori/Ministry of Maori Development, which dealt with just 65.9 percent of its requests within the legislated timeframe.
Police also received the most OIA requests in total - 11054 in the 12 month period.
Next behind them was was the Earthquake Commission, who received 6785 requests. 96.7 percent of those were handled on time.