Aratohu OIA mā ngā umanga OIA guidance for agencies

The guiding principle of the Official Information Act 1982 is that information must be made available if requested, unless a reason exists under the Act for withholding it.

Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission is progressively developing a suite of guidance to help agencies meet their obligations under the Act in terms of managing:

• OIA requests
• organisation OIA systems and processes.

Contact us if your organisation needs advice or assistance to in regards to the OIA.

oiaforum@publicservice.govt.nz

Managing OIA requests

Guidance for practitioners

The guidance for practitioners covers different aspects of responding to a request for official information with hints and tips to help agencies manage and respond to these.  It complements the guidance published by the Office of the Ombudsman.

• Processing an Official Information Act Request(PDF, 122 KB)
• Contacting requesters(PDF, 77 KB)
• Minister and Agency Official Information Requests(PDF, 71 KB)
• Extensions and the Official Information Act - Section 15A(PDF, 68 KB)
• Information Requests Requiring Substantial Collation or Research(PDF, 82 KB)
• Transferring Information Requests - Section 14(PDF, 93 KB)

Resources and publications — Ombudsman New Zealand

Practice notes

The OIA practice notes provide specific guidance on the application of some areas of the OIA.

• Practice notes for OIA responses(PDF, 465 KB)

Managing agency OIA systems and processes

We also provide guidance on OIA systems and processes.

Agency website guidance

This outlines how agencies can structure their websites to make it easy for New Zealanders to request information. 

Agency website guidance(PDF, 91 KB)

Example: Official Information Act Requests

Proactive release of official information

This provides guidance on developing internal policies and practices in relation to the proactive release of official information, including responses to requests for information under the Official Information Act. 

Proactive release of official information(PDF, 69 KB)

Proactive release

OIA statistics guidance

OIA statistics guidance:

• encourages agencies to publish their OIA statistics with relevant commentary on their websites
• clarifies which OIA requests should be logged for the purposes of consistent statistics collection and performance reporting
• encourages agencies to consider and report a range of statistics internally and publicly, beyond those published by the Commission.

Selection and Reporting of Official Information Act Statistics(PDF, 110 KB)

More information on the OIA statistics regularly published for Public Service agencies is available. 

OIA statistics