Department does not hold logs of #casa communications

It really surprises me that a recent FOI on the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development showed [see below] that there is no oversight and cross checking as to communications between #casa and DIRD.

To go to the history of FOI’s and #casa, there is an interesting post made in 2012, which says, in part, #casa do not take FOI’s seriously, more determining that a FOI is for avoidance rather than showing any sort of transparency.

And of course, the FOI log that must be kept by #casa

On the #casa website, it says:

“…..CASA is required by the Freedom of Information Act 1982 s11C to publish a disclosure log on its website.  The disclosure log lists information which has been released in response to an FOI access request.  This requirement has applied since 1 May 2011…..”

Yet there is only one entry for 2016 and 2017 in the log

Freedom of Information request:

“……..Communications between DIRD and CASA in 2015…”

“………… made this Freedom of Information request to Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development

I would appreciate a list of:

1. Documents and communications sent to DIRD from CASA;

2. Documents and communications sent from DIRD to CASA

between January 2015 and December 2015

In reply, DIRD refused saying:

“…………The two most pertinent aspects of this practical refusal reason were:

1) The Department does not keep “logs” of email communications.
2) In order to create such a document we would need to search the email of every employee and every section to identify documents that may be relevant, which is an unreasonable diversion of Departmental resources………….”