Comparisons

I've just had a response back to another of my OIA requests, and it really shows the differences between government departments. Getting answers out of Corrections is like getting blood out of a stone (their most recent answer was late and ignored a large amount of the request), Defence took the full twenty working days, and Justice is getting very close to that limit on a request I sent away for information which had already been released to the media. I had however heard that DoC drops everything when they get an OIA request and processes it immediately, and it seems to be true: accounting for postage time, they must have taken less than two days to respond to my most recent question.

This really shows the difference internal culture can make. Other government departments should take a page out of DOC's book, and give similar instructions to their staff to respond to public scrutiny in a timely and efficient manner, rather than viewing the twenty day limit as a standard response time to be ignored whenever convenient.