The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) spends close to $3 billion of public money on transport activities every year. All your petrol tax dollars, all the road user charges that trucks pay and a decent chunk of your vehicle registration fees go into a funding pool (known as the National Land Transport Fund or NLTF) that NZTA is responsible for dispensing. Between 2009 and 2012, NZTA will spend close to $9 billion of public money on various things: mainly new motorways, but also helping to pay for local road improvements, helping to subsidise public transport, reimbursing the police for the enforcement work they do and much much more.
Yet while NZTA spends a massive amount of public money each year, they are relatively immune from public scrutiny when it comes to decisions they make. Of course there is the political accountability through the Minister of Transport, but when it comes to public scrutiny we know relatively little about what NZTA does, why they choose to fund a particular project, why they don’t choose to fund something else, and so on. In the case of the new Auckland Transport CCO, there were huge worries that it would become unaccountable, secretive and hidden away from scrutiny – but fortunately due to political pressure it seems that’s unlikely to be the case. The board meetings for Auckland Transport are open to the public, the agenda and minutes for each board meeting are published online.
But when it comes to NZTA, we have an archetypal model of a secretive, unaccountable and hidden away agency. Their board meetings are closed to the public (and they’re generally held in Wellington anyway, which isn’t much use for me), and the amount of publicly available information in terms of what goes on at the board meetings is highly limited – to the briefest of agendas that gets published on their website (usually late). Minutes of funding decisions are also published – although once again generally in the vaguest of ways.
Being the curious person that I am – and also being wary of the interesting stuff that gets discussed at NZTA board meetings – I have made a bit of a habit of making Official Information Act requests for NZTA board papers. They’re often very reluctant to give me the information in a hurry though – as illustrated by the response I received today to my most recent request:
It seems a tad strange that minutes from the meeting need to be ratified before they can even send me copies of the board papers presented at the meeting. But it’s probably not worth complaining to the Ombudsman as by the time that complaint makes its way through the system chances are I will have received the documents. It’s still a bit annoying though.
But the bigger thing that annoys me is the question of why I have to go through a convoluted OIA request process to get my hands on this information in the first place. You wouldn’t think it would be too difficult for NZTA to publish online their board papers – in the same way that Auckland Transport now does. Surely there’s a genuine public interest in finding out more about the topics that many of the board papers above relate to. Certainly in the past I have found out some interesting stuff from NZTA board papers – like the fact they turned down an opportunity to put the Victoria Park Viaduct into a tunnel in both directions for the mere cost of $15 million or NZTA’s clear admission that the 50% farebox recovery policy is a joke.
So here’s where I need some assistance from my blog readers. My plan is to effectively force NZTA to publish their board papers online by annoying the heck out of them with multiple OIA requests. If a large number of blog readers make OIA requests for all NZTA board papers at each meeting, one would hope that eventually they will see the light and start publishing the papers on their website. It should be fairly easy to do – three simple steps really:
- Check here for the latest meeting agendas. I will try to do a reminder blog post each month when a new agenda comes out – including an analysis of what might be interesting in that month’s board meeting.
- Fire off an email to andrew.martin@nzta.govt.nz or simply to Official.Correspondence@nzta.govt.nz saying that you “request, under the Official Information Act, all board papers presented at the NZTA board meeting of [insert date]. If you want to be a bit more targeted, have a look through the agenda and pick which ones you think might be particularly interesting.
- When you eventually receive the board papers, have a look through to see if there’s anything interesting – and flick me an email if there is!
With a lot of people making requests, and a lot of eyes browsing over what NZTA is doing, we should get some interesting results. If you’re not really interested, but just want to contribute to making NZTA more accountable, just pop what you receive in the paper recycling, you will have done your bit in any case by encouraging NZTA to open up to the public by avoiding the hassle and publishing the board papers online. And you don’t need to feel guilty about wasting their time – compared to wasting $1.7 billion on the Puhoi-Wellsford holiday highway, a bit of photocopying is nothing.
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7 March! That’s two months from now!
They should send them as soon as possible after the 3 February ratification – allowing for delays with the printing and posting, ideally they should be to you no later than St Valentine’s Day (Monday 14 February)
I’m going to be a little contrary here, and defend the ratification issue.
As you doubtless know, Josh, the first point of business at a properly-run meeting (and I have no doubt that NZTA Board meetings are run by the book) after apologies is “matters arising”. Since this can encompass any matter raised at the last meeting, potentially including requests for clarification or amendment of materials presented, nothing tabled can be considered “true and correct” until it’s been confirmed so at the next meeting.
That said, that’s an unacceptable delay following the next meeting. It’s effectively using that meeting as the start date for the extra 20 days. If I were you I’d raise this with the Ombudsman, no matter how pointless it may seem, and encourage everyone else who makes the same requests to kick it to the Ombudsman every time there’s an extension request that is more than 20+20 from the day the first request was received.
Two-fold reasoning for that. 1) It’ll annoy the hell out of NZTA, and tie them up further with answering to the Office of the Ombudsmen as to why their extensions are so lengthy, and 2) it’ll hopefully get the OotO to issue a “This is not the purpose of the extension rule” statement to the entire public sector, which is not at all a bad thing. Plus it’ll get them aware that NZTA are taking the piss on OIA requests.
There’s no reason NZTA cannot pull together everything you’ve asked for pending confirmation at the next meeting, and deal to any matters arising (which I doubt happen very often) as soon as possible after that. The OIA is not meant to be a way to avoid doing work, which is another reason I think you should go to the OotO. They take a dim view of this kind of jiggery-pokery by covered organisations.
Thanks for the further information on what the Ombudsman might take issue with Matt. I see your point about NZTA’s need to ensure everything’s in order, but one would assume once that happens (at the Feb 3rd meeting) they could release the information straight away.
The original due date for the OIA request was Feb 7th anyway.
The bit where NZTA are skirting with the law is here, where it says (emphasis mine):
In the circumstances, pushing the deadline out by 20 working days does not appear reasonable. Reasonable might be 10/2, which is a week after the meeting to allow for any matters arising.
Don’t underestimate the OotO. Their position on dragging the chain is that it’d better be very well justified, and NZTA obviously are already back at work. They’re not even into “working days” yet, according to the law (which quaintly gives the public service 25/12-15/1 as a holiday!), but you got a response today. Sic’m!
While I understand the frustrations of the OIA system, I’m not sure your approach will generate anything other than more photocopying work for admin staff. After all, if you’ve requested the items already, identical requests will just involved further copying of the marked-up papers.
He’s not really expecting any exciting new information to come out, though he’ll doubtless welcome the extra eyeballs looking over the releases. Rather, he’s wanting to get the admin staff so thoroughly sick of the monthly routine of preparing dozens of OIA packs of the same information that NZTA will stop behaving like a secret society and start acting like a public body: by posting the information comprehensively and in a timely fashion on their website. It’s not like most of this stuff is sensitive, commercially or otherwise.
It would be interesting to test the rules around the form the information is provided in.
The papers are probably prepared in an electronic format, so ask for them to be sent by email. Suggest that it would use less paper, be quicker, not require any postage and generally be accordance with section 16(2) of the OIA, which requires that the information is supplied in the format the requester asks for it.
From there it’s only logical that the papers would be published on the website.
Matt is correct about the process of approving the minutes of the meetings. However, unless there are good reasons to think the minutes would change, or that any of the changes would affect the data requested, it’s reasonable to expect the requested data to be sent immediately. Alternatively, a note that the minutes are draft and subject to change could mitigate any risks associated with sending out information early.
Apologies if this appears two or three times – wassup with the captcha?
Interestingly, I did suggest that their response to my OIA request could be via email if possible, otherwise in hard copy.
PS – will try to fix captcha.
I think there are issues with responding electronically, in terms of compliance with policy. Certainly for Ministers they will only respond to letters by post even if the letter is sent by email and the sender explicitly states that an email response is acceptable.
If that’s still the case (it’s been a while) it does need revision in light of the move to e-government and general environmental concerns. Plus, of course, the logistics of sending hundreds of pages by post.
Maybe you could state that you prefer email delivery and state why, then leave it to NZTA to explain why they must deliver in an alternative format. With this explanation you can ponder what to do next.
I’m guessing the captcha is case-sensitive.
It’s not just the minutes that are subject to change, though, and it’s impractical to recall and re-issue everything.
I think they’re doing the right (as in “correct” and as in “good”) thing by not releasing until confirmed at the next meeting, but disagree with their obvious attitude that they cannot possibly do anything about this material until after the meeting. As I said above, they could pull all the requested material together now and just deal with changes that arise in the meeting. If there are none, the material is ready to go immediately the meeting closes. If changes need to be handled, the material’s all assembled and the changes can be processed within a couple of days. There’s no reason it couldn’t all be done within the window of the original request.
I don’t think they are doing the right thing.
The reports should be “FINAL” before they are put to the board. Who puts a “DRAFT” paper up to a board of directors? Board papers need be be well considered by the author, and reviewed by a couple of peers and managers, weeks before they are put to the board. While some of the contents of some reports may need to be removed for a variety of reasons, those reasons would apply equally to a DRAFT as they would to a FINAL version.
I acknowledge that there should be some discussion around the contents of papers by the board (otherwise why present the paper?), and the exact nature of this discussion could be subject to correction, but the report contents should not change as a result of the board meeting. Adding an addendum or new sections as a result of the board meeting, issuing another stage of a multi-part report, sure, that’s acceptable, but the reports themselves should be available almost immediately. Even if minutes regarding the discussion are not, and take a month or so to produce.
It would be good if NZTA got a bit of a kicking by the Ombudsman – they might smarten their act up for everyone making OIA requests.
On the main topic, yes I was thinking that the **Directors** of NZTA need to be held accountable as well for the billions being spent on the RoNS. Surely they can’t all agree with Steven Joyce’s priorities?
Even if they do all agree with Joyce that we ought to rip up every last inch of railway track that doesn’t exempt them from explaining it to the public. After all, more of it is our money than is theirs or Joyce’s, no matter how much they collectively get paid.
I’m wondering what “consultations necessary” means. The CBT did an OIA request in May ’09 last year that revealed that the RoNS hadn’t passed an economic assessment:
http://www.bettertransport.org.nz/2009/05/economic-benefits-of-roads-of-national-significance-unknown/
We had to go to the Ombudsman to get a response, so it makes me wonder if your request contains sensitive information that needs “consultations” too.
NZTA board members are here:
http://www.nzta.govt.nz/about/who-and-what/who-we-are/our-board.html
They don’t look like rabid roading lobbyists to me, so hopefully they are a fair and moderating influence.
Some of it looks to be advice to the Minister, which will doubtless be withheld on the grounds of “providing free and frank advice” no matter how BS that really is. Looking through that list, I’m more and more of the opinion that OotO needs to be involved ASAP to try and forestall attempts to deny access to material and thus drag the entire process out longer.
I think there’s probably some commercially-sensitive material in there, particularly for the Waitemata Harbour crossing, but most of those documents should be significantly non-sensitive and releasable.
Totally agree with Matt! Please kick it to the Ombudsman – that is what they are there for, to hold these mongrels to account. This is classic ‘Yes Minister’ behaviour. Stall for as long as possible in the hope that the public get tired of asking (and being ignored) and give up asking.
Armchair critic – NZTA are claiming the board minutes are draft until they are ratified as a ‘true and correct record of the previous meeting’ at their subsequent meeting. While this is technically correct, it is easily rectified by plastering ‘DRAFT’ stamps (and/or a brief message explaining ‘draft until ratified by NZTA Board’) all over each page – whether electronic or paper copy. The reports presented to the NZTA Board (and which *should* be included with the minutes) are almost always ‘final’ versions, and are not what is holding up the OIA request here.
And I completely agree with Matt again on s15A of the OIA – it is highly dubious for NZTA to claim a time extension under s15A, as you are not asking for vast quantities of paper, nor does it need to be collated from old (paper) records or from archives (so no grounds under s15A(a)). Nor is consultation required to make a decision here – if they claim they cannot release the minutes as they are not yet finalised, that is different from having to consult someone about releasing them.
That is, NZTA could just deny you the ‘unfinalised’ minutes – without the need to invoke s15A(b) to consult someone. But that would require them to cite whatever OIA section they are using to deny you the ‘unfinalised’ minutes, and I don’t believe there are any such grounds to withhold draft minutes… So NZTA are trying to use s15A(b) to dodge saying they have no grounds to delay answering you.
A shrewd follow-up OIA request would be to ask who NZTA had to ‘consult’ to release the documents in your original request. If it is just another NZTA staffer or Board chair, then no time extension is needed for that, as they are readily available. A nuisance I know, but this is how you force them to change their manners. Hehehe.
Absolutely, bob, there’s nothing in the minutes that a draft stamp and a good disclaimer couldn’t fix.
This is classic evasion from an organisation that is not used to this level of scrutiny or interest in its activities/methods.
The only risk I’m concerned about is that this may lead to more secrecy, with legal protection of that secrecy, as opposed to a more genuinely open culture at NZTA.
Keep in mind Josh that they can charge you money for the privilege of providing the information, and if requests become frequent enough …
Hi Scott, Under what basis can NZTA charge for providing info?
I recently asked NZTA for copies of the studies done on the improving the existing SH1 between Puhoi & Warkworth over the past 10 years and was told:
“Due to the amount of information we need to retrieve and copy this request would need to be cost recoverable.”
Compliance with an OIA request can be charged for on the basis of s15(1A) of the Act, which states Subject to section 24, every department or Minister of the Crown or organisation (including an organisation whose activities are funded in whole or in part by another person) may charge for the supply of official information under this Act. Section 24 is the right of access to personal information, for which there can be no charge.
The check on s15(1A) being used to discourage requests is s15(2), which states Any charge fixed shall be reasonable and regard may be had to the cost of the labour and materials involved in making the information available and to any costs incurred pursuant to a request of the applicant to make the information available urgently.
Charging for the costs of complying with requests involving significant quantities of data is also recommended as one of the alternatives to be considered before refusing the request on the grounds of excessive disruption to the organisation’s operations.
What Josh has requested here isn’t even close to that kind of quantity. Some OIA requests, such as the one for ministerial credit card statements, run to 10s-of-000s of pages and require whole trucks to deliver. We’re only talking a few hundred pages here, at most, and since they’re mostly reports they’re already collated.
They can, but the charges must be reasonable. Using charges to discourage requests is not acceptable, and any charges can be challenged through the Ombudsmen.
They also cannot aggregate requests for the same information from multiple sources and decide that they’ll start charging some when they haven’t charged others. The heavy lifting has to be done for the first request, and after that it’s mostly just duplication. Especially if they send things electronically, which has no photocopying costs or the like.
I fully agree with the intent of this blog. NZTA is overly secretive – and hence unaccountable.
When Geoff Dangerfield was first appointed CEO of NZTA he gave a presentation to the ARC’s Regional Transport Committee where his main message was the importance of transparency. He said this was particularly important as the funding (LTNZ) and construction (Transit) functions were being merged into the one organisation (NZTA).
Unfortunately, in my experience, NZTA has become even more secretive than Transit. Geoff’s presentation on transparency impressed me at the time, but it turns out to have been a farce.
I think the degree of political involvement is driving NZTA’s lack of transparency and this deserves:
1) some media attention to highlight the issue
2) a review of the decision to merge LTNZ and Transit
3) rules on the use of “confidentially” and keeping papers in ‘draft’ to keep them out of the public forum
I have received my copy of this now, I requested it by email and they sent the pdfs to me yesterday afternoon.
Could you flick them on to me? admin@transportblog.co.nz
Have done
Apparently details of the Waitemata Harbour crossing will be released here http://awhc.nzta.govt.nz at the end of March.