Officials have warned Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith that making changes to the Official Information Act (OIA) could raise concerns.<\/p>\n
Documents proactively released by the Ministry of Justice include a late December briefing to Goldsmith, which noted the minister \u201cindicated an interest in reforms to the OIA to achieve efficiency and cost effectiveness improvements\u201d.<\/p>\n
Forecasts predict the cost of OIA responses to rise over the coming years.<\/p>\n
Goldsmith said he\u2019d asked the ministry to gather more information on the impacts of the \u201csignificant increase\u201d of OIAs on the public service.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are interested to know what revisions could be made, to make the act more efficient and practical.<\/p>\n
The minister said he was expecting advice this year and said no decisions had been made.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Justice contracted external consultant Tregaskis Brown to model the costs for the public service in its responses to OIA requests.<\/p>\n
Officials said, as the consultancy agency was not able to consider the nature of the OIA requests, the cost estimates were likely \u201cconservative\u201d.<\/p>\n
A majority of 77% of requests were sent to six agencies – New Zealand Police, the Natural Hazards Commission, the Department of Corrections, the Defence Force, Fire and Emergency, and Customs.<\/p>\n
NZ Police was a key driver of an increase in requests, as media enquiries and emergency requests became in-scope of the act.<\/p>\n
Of the $183.6m cost to respond to OIA requests in the 2024\/25 financial year, NZ Police spent $50m, Health New Zealand spent $16.4m and Corrections spent $10.8m.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Justice said if the minister wished to prioritise reforms of the OIA, consultation could be progressed in mid-2026, or policy and research could be done in 2026 to inform consultation on a \u201cbroader range of possible changes\u201d in early 2027.<\/p>\n
The briefing warned any review of the OIA would attract a \u201csignificant level\u201d of interest from stakeholders.<\/p>\n
Officials said given the OIA is constitutionally significant, \u201cany changes are likely to raise a high level of public interest and possible concern for any perceived limit on freedom of expression\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Justice said it wanted significant public input.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would recommend allowing for extensive public consultation, as well as consultation with key \u2018requesters\u2019 such as the media, political parties, academics, and civil societies who will have a particular interest in any proposed changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the high-level of anticipated interest, we recommend a consultation period of at least 10-12 weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Justice and Public Service Commission sent a letter to agencies in March asking for input on the cost of OIA requests and to better understand government agencies\u2019 experience with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe consider this work to be essential for safeguarding the official information system and supporting the purpose of the legislation into the future,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt may support future changes for a more efficient and effective official information system.\u201d<\/p>\n
A follow-up survey from the consulting agency sought information on volume, complexity and scope of requests, as well as cost estimates and staff training on the OIA.<\/p>\n
Azaria Howell is a multimedia reporter working from Parliament\u2019s press gallery. She joined NZME in 2022 and became a Newstalk ZB political reporter in late 2024, with a keen interest in public service agency reform and government spending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Officials have warned Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith that making changes to the Official Information Act (OIA) could raise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[26696,365,95,9556,363,364,17094,83328,80016,682,24004,4187,802,124,266,221,15415,9557,14153,130,111,139,69,59787,234013,2887,9478,4491,418,145,56954,11226,1530],"class_list":["post-461609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-agencies","tag-ai","tag-and","tag-artificial","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-avoid","tag-balloon","tag-ballooning","tag-being","tag-coming","tag-cost","tag-costs","tag-could","tag-government","tag-how","tag-information","tag-intelligence","tag-modelling","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-oia","tag-proactively","tag-release","tag-requests","tag-respond","tag-shows","tag-technology","tag-transparency","tag-urged","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}