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Other Information

Congratulations to Amy Hu

One of our longest standing employees, Amy Hu, has been promoted to Associate on and from 1 July 2020.

 

Amy has been with FOI Solutions for almost 10 years. She has managed brilliantly to juggle a busy legal practice with raising a young family.  Congratulations on this wonderful and well-deserved achievement.

 

Amy continues to provide excellent, outcome-focused advice to government agency clients in areas including public interest disclosures, privacy, and freedom of information and at the same time maintaining good humour.  She is a well respected and loved member of the FOI Solutions family.

 

Webinar series

As many of you who have already "attended" one or more of our webinars would be aware, FOI Solutions is providing a broad range of interesting, high-demand training sessions via webinar.  

 

Sessions which are available during August include the following:

  • Basic FOI Training 1
  • Basic FOI Training 2
  • Intermediate FOI Training: Exemptions 1
  • Intermediate FOI Training: Exemptions 2
  • FOI & Privacy Intensive
  • Recent trends in the personal affairs exemption
  • Tackling the challenges of 3rd party consultations
  • Substantial and unreasonable diversion requests: How much is too much?
  • FOI Professional Standards: Are you complying?
  • Privacy Outline and Refresher
  • Data breach notification (for Victoria)

For more information or to book online, visit the training sessions page on our website.

Question time

Q: I have received a casual email from OVIC telling me they have received communications from an applicant where I made a decision refusing to grant access under the FOI Act, but my agency has not been formally notified of either a review or complaint being accepted by the OVIC.  What should I do?

 

A: We think if you provide any information to OVIC about the FOI matter without any further steps being taken, there is a risk you would be interfering with the privacy of the applicant under the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014  (Vic).   

 

You are only required (and we believe authorised) to communicate with the OVIC about an FOI matter when the jurisdiction of the OVIC has been engaged and you have been notified of that fact under appropriate provisions in the FOI Act.  Until that time, if you disclose personal information of an individual applicant to the OVIC, it is arguable that you are disclosing information other than for the primary purpose for which you received the applicant's personal information in handling the request.

 

There are steps you can take to eliminate that risk, such as having OVIC arrange for the applicant to provide your agency with express written consent for you do communicate with the OVIC about their FOI request.  Other options may also be available.  If you are unsure what to do, don't hesitate to contact us.