Freedom of information and proactive disclosure

Information held by the department is a valuable public resource and the department is committed to being open and accountable, engaging with the community and in public participation in making decisions, policies, and laws.

In 2013, the South Australia Government approved the online publication of information regularly requested under Freedom of Information (FOI) and to proactively make this information available to all members of the community.

Information previously published within this report including information on overseas travel undertaken by the department, and contractual arrangements entered into by the department, is now published online and available on the department’s Open Government website at www.dpti.sa.gov.au/open_government.

Further information on Freedom of Information (FOI) and the nature of documents and information held by the department, including the department’s FOI Information Statement is available on the department internet at www.dpti.sa.gov.au/freedom_of_information.

Public complaints

In 2014, the Ombudsman of South Australia published an audit of State Government agencies’ complaint handling policies and procedures. Recommendation 3 of the audit calls for the reporting of public complaints to Parliament, with agencies required to publish details of public complaints in their annual reports.

The department is a diverse agency with complaints data captured in numerous places. With a central point of capture in response to the Ombudsman Recommendation 3 requiring system development, it is expected this system will be ready for the 2015-16 reporting year. As a result, reporting data has not been presented for the 2014-15 reporting year, as with the centralised system not yet fully functional any reporting on partial data may create an incomplete and false representation of complaints received by the department for this reporting year. This also may not allow a true comparison to 2015-16 data, by when the centralised system will be fully operational.

In addition to the system development to enable consistent agency capture and reporting of public complaint information, the department has undertaken actions in line with the new Australian/NZ Standard Guidelines for complaint management in organisations (AS/NZS 10002:2014) in accordance with further recommendations within Ombudsman’s audit that include development of a Complaint Management Policy and implementation of the department’s Complaint Management Framework.