Welcome to FreeTheInformation

Under Part III of the Freedom of Information Act (Cth), members of the public can obtain access to a government agency or ministerial documents. Access to government information is key in ensuring ‘openness, accountability and responsibility’ within a democratic government. Importantly, transparency is necessary in order to ensure that the actions of the government are exposed to public security and challenge. This is necessary to ensure public confidence in government. In order to ensure transparency is maintained, government services and information must be readily available.

Accordingly, FOI requests aim to ‘increas[e] public participation in Government processes, with a view to promoting better-informed decision-making; and increas[e] scrutiny, discussion, comment and review of the Government’s activities’ (Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs).

However, ‘Australia’s FOI regime continues to be undermined in practice by inordinate delay, under-resourcing and the abuse of statutory exceptions’ (Centre for Public Integrity).

FreeTheInformation attempts to tackle 2 of these problems.

Problem 1: There is no common approach to submitting an FOI request, either across states or at the Commonwealth level. See, eg, by email (AG and Federal Court, by web form (Home Affairs).

All Australian states have legislation that allows the public to access equivalent documents within the given state's agencies. For example, the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 (NSW) (‘GIPA Act’) provides access to government information in NSW. The difference in legislation between states means that there is no standardised method of applying for an FOI request—generally, you would have to follow the specific application process of whichever agency whose documents you want access to. This can be incredibly confusing and time- consuming, particularly as a number of these agencies provide little information on what is needed to actually submit an FOI request.

RightToKnow attempts to do something similar, within the Commonwealth jurisdiction, but publishes all requests online. This is problematic as many users, particularly journalists, fall under an ethical obligation to keep their requests private.

FreeTheInformation attempts to standardise the application process within each state and the Commonwealth jurisdiction by reducing the application process into a simple form that can be submitted to any agency. This way, the application process remains entirely private. No information you provide leaves your device. We do not store any user information, nor do we publish application requests online.

Problem 2: Government agencies are increasingly refusing FOI requests on ‘practical’ grounds.

It has become more common for government agencies to come across FOI requests that do not comply with requisite standards. In these cases, FOI requests are generally refused on ‘practical grounds’ under s 24AB of the FOI Act—‘if the work involved in processing the FOI request would substantially and unreasonably divert the agency’s resources from its other operations or if it does not adequately identify the documents sought.’ In 2021-22, 1281 requests were rejected for this very reason. This is also problematic as it adds to the workload of agency staff, increasing the amount of time it takes for FOI requests to be processed. FreeTheInformation targets this problem by guiding users through the process of creating a valid, informative FOI request.

Project created and developed using Next.js by Jarrod Li and Stephanie Tong. For the source code, see here.

FreeTheInformation does not claim to provide legal advice, and it is not intended to be a substitute for legal advice.