Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier says he is more unhappy than ever before with the way government agencies are performing under the Official Information Act (OIA).
Last year, the number of complaints about OIA responses from central government agencies jumped by 33 percent compared with the previous 12 months, bringing the total for 2021 to 1614.
Boshier told Checkpoint one of the biggest problems was a delay in receiving information.
"There're a lot of unhappy people who want information, who are disgruntled, who don't feel that they know enough, and so they've pursued a lot more information requests, and I think complaints to us are up because I don't think agencies have been resourced enough to enable that to occur quickly and properly."
Complaints to the Ombudsman rose in the six months to 31 December 2021 from 722 to 892, according to latest data published today.
Boshier said he did not want to personalise the offenders but the statistics indicated the Ministry of Health accounted for 18 percent of complaints alone in that period.
"That is 168 out of the 892, now that for the first time has overtaken the police who have always been the highest because of their huge number of OIAs, so they were 13 percent of complaints and 115 out of the 892. That gives you a bit of an idea of where some of the problems are seen as being located."
A fair proportion of the complaints were justified, he said.
"Over the years when I've talked to you about the operation of the OIA, I'm probably more unhappy now about some aspects of the way it's working than I've ever been.
"I thought carefully about saying that because I've just been signing off so many final opinions over the last week or two, dealing with unconscionable delay and bad practice, and I have to say this, because if we're going to remain top of the integrity stakes in New Zealand, we've got to do better."
Boshier said he believed the problem related to a mixture of reluctance for transparency and resourcing problems.
"But as far as a reluctance to be transparent is concerned, one of my concerns is that a number of agencies use the OIA to fob people off, or as a shield.
"In other words, if you want that bit of information, you'll need to formalise it into an OIA. It doesn't need to be formal and what I'm trying to convey is if a journalist or someone else wants information, yes, that's an official information request, but look it can be docked just like that, on the spot, if the agency has the information and can release it.
"There's meant to be increasing availability of information in New Zealand, not decreasing.
"I think that what government agencies most need to do are two things, Lisa, to be resourced, to conduct this work properly, not just put it in a corner to do whenever they've got time to do it, and secondly, there's got to be a working knowledge of specialised staff to do this work."
On the other hand, he said his office had managed to resolve "an awful lot" of the complaints, which was not something that used to happen in the past.
"The vast majority of complaints are able to be resolved by us along the way, and they don't require a final opinion and a final slap on the hand ... I just have to keep on like this ... I've got to call out bad behaviour so that there is an incentive to comply with the Act."
