In line with its commitment to operate in an open and accountable manner, the department has continued to improve the way in which it processes requests for information and meets its statutory obligations under the Freedom of Information Act 1982.

In 2008–09, the department improved its business processes to promote the government’s new Freedom of Information (FOI) direction by implementing a range of strategies, including:

• establishing two FOI processing centres in Sydney and Melbourne, with training being provided to staff to ensure they have a sufficient understanding of the FOI Act to make appropriate decisions
• reducing the number of unnecessary FOI requests received by improving staff understanding of what information can be released or amended under the Privacy Act 1988. The FOI processing centres are referring requests to business areas so they can be processed under the Privacy Act
• providing information and leadership to staff through messages from the secretary, an outreach training program, the development of FOI and Privacy eLearning packages, training for inductees, updated advice to client contact areas and web information to drive cultural change on access to information in the department
• introduction of electronic FOI processing in Sydney, Melbourne and National Office. This has enabled files to be handled and processed more efficiently and provided greater opportunities to release information more quickly to clients via email and CD ROM.

At 30 June 2009, the department had 211 overdue requests on hand (out of a total of 966) and a compliance rate of 70 per cent. This compares to 310 overdue requests as at 30 June 2008 and a compliance rate of 70 per cent. This is in spite of an increase in the number of requests received, from almost 8000 in 2007–08 to over 10 500 in 2008–09.