OIA statistics

SSC and the Office of the Ombudsman have released the annual OIA and OIA complaint statistics. On the OIA front, most core agencies have improved their performance, though a number were impacted by the Kaikoura earthquake. TPK is by far the worst performing core agency, with less than 70% of requests completed on time; while they've improved on lst year's 65%, they're still well below an acceptable standard, and you have to wonder what is wrong at that agency if they're so shit at a core function like this. For non-core agencies, DHBs are still the worst performers, though Hawke's Bay DHB has made a massive improvement from ~40% to ~60%, so they seem to be trying a little harder now. Police, Corections and EQC get the most requests, as you'd expect.

On the complaints front, police received the most complaints, followed by MSD, MBIE (immigration) and Corrections. Complaints information also covers Ministers, and the worst was the Minister of Police (Paula Bennett), followed by the Minister of Conservation (Maggie Barry). Nick Smith, Louise Upston, and Nicky wagner also did poorly. There's also information on completed complaints, though this is less useful - there's information on how far a complaint got through the process, and on the ultimate decision where one was made - but nothing summarising the effective remedy for the bulk of complaints resolved without a formal finding. Looking through the raw data, many of these result in remdial action to benefit the complainant, but it would be useful to have that summarised.

We're already seeing the benefit of these statistics, with the SSC sending "please explains" to underperforming agencies, and shit Ministers being named and shamed. Hopefully we'll see more in the future.