MINISTRY OF JUSTICE, CHARGING GUIDELINES FOR OFFICIAL INFORMATION ACT 1982 REQUESTS

18 March 2002

Official Information Act: Charging for Services

On 18 March 2002 the Government approved the following revised guidelines for charging for official information. These guidelines replace those approved by the State Sector Committee in January 1992 (STA (92) M 1/3) and set out in the Department of Justice memorandum of 26 February 1992.

They are provided for Government Departments, Crown Entities, State-owned Enterprises and all other organisations which are subject to the Official Information Act 1982. They represent what the Government regards as reasonable charges for the purposes of the Official Information Act and should be followed in all cases unless good reason exists for not doing so. Organisations covered by the Act who wish to develop their own charging regimes should be aware that charges are liable to review by an Ombudsman.

1. Existing charges to remain
2. Fixing the amount of the charge
3. Staff Time
4. Photocopying
5. Other Costs
6. Cost recovery for commercially valuable information
7. Remission of charges
8. Deposits
9. Cost control
10. Review of Decisions on charges
11. Ombudsman investigations
12. GST

PDF file (Adobe Acrobat v4.0 PDF 27KB)