Council’s Cost Claims on FOI Not Adding Up from Finance Department
On page 25 in the adopted Council budget (June 2020), notes say ” 2. An additional Freedom of Information (FOI) officer has been included as well as increasing hours for current FOI staff to manage a significant increase in FOI requests. Increase of $133,000.”
A report at the time quoted Council’s Acting Director Corporate and Community Services, Tracey Costello as saying “the budget for addressing FOI requests by ratepayers had now reached a staggering $190,000 per annum. An approximate full-year budget for managing the current volume of FOI requests and informal information requests is $190,000, and this includes internal staff wages along with legal consultation fees. Formal FOI requests have more than doubled during this financial year compared to last. Ms Costello said council was now expending 63 hours per week looking into formal FOI requests, along with other information requests” and that “FOI requests total about one every fortnight.”
This newspaper investigated this staggering information.
The doubling claim: Scanning Council Budget documents, the number of FOI requests received by Council in the last three years was 20, 20, and 27 so clearly “formal claims more than doubled” is clearly not the case since 27 is not double 20.
The Report noted that 9 of the claims were not progressed, 8 were enquiries only, and 2 had no documents to locate.
The $133,000 increase claim: So, these 7 FOI requests in the last year apparently led to a blow out of $133,000. A total of $190,000 now being spent by Council means the 20 from previous year only cost $60,000 to manage.
Is Council really claiming that these extra 7 cases are the cause of the tripling the cost to complete that work? From $60,000 in previous year to $190,000 in last year? Does not sound plausible. If those 7 FOI’s really cost the $133,000 to process Council could perhaps apply the clause within the FOI Act that allows an agency to refuse to supply documents if it would unreasonably take up officers time from their normal tasks.
Perhaps the additional expenses were derived from Council obtaining legal advice? A response from Ms Costello states that contractor/legal advice in 2019/20 for FOI support amounted to approximately $32,000 whilst budgeted 2020/21 is $25,000.
Ms Costello clarifies that the $190,000 is for 2020/21 budget so does not represent current (2019/20) cases. So legal expenses are expected to be less.
We asked Ms Costello what the actual expense for FOI was in 2019/20 year to clarify if the increase of $133,000 was correct and she replied as follows:
“In terms of actual spend, the actual cost for FOI in 2019/20 has not been specifically measured as this has formed portions of multiple staff members overarching roles in risk management. I would only be able to provide costs for the entire risk management function, which would misrepresent the cost. A dedicated staff member for FOI is included in the budget for the first time in the current 2020/21 budget, which has allowed us to provide a more accurate cost estimate for the budget.”
So, to be clear, Council are not basing the extra $133,000 costs claim on a comparison to the previous year’s expense in this area. They are in their own words, unable to ascertain the costs for FOI for the current 2019/20 year and so their claim of an increase of $133,000 is misleading. They have in fact for the first time, included a budget line item for FOI requests which was previously included within other budget line items and worked on by several different members of staff.
The 63 hours per week claim: This states the 63 hours is for FOI requests and other information requests. As such it is not clear how much relates to FOI requests or indeed what the other information requests comprise. Given that Ms Costello states that FOI requests come at a rate of one per fortnight it seems a stretch to claim that the whole of the 63 hours is for the FOI component of the information requests.
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