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openaustralia / righttoknow

Theme for, and issues specific to, Right To Know.
https://www.righttoknow.org.au/
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How are schools dealt with under FOI #463

Open benrfairless opened 9 years ago

benrfairless commented 9 years ago

I'm not sure if each school would be covered individually under FOI, as teachers in public schools are normally employed not by the school but by the Department/Directorate of Education.

I can't see anything in the law which makes it clear if schools == authorities. In the ACT, an FOIable authority either needs to be specified via the FOI regulations or be an "administrative unit" which is established by Administrative Arrangements.

The Department of Education is FOIable, and the Minister has responsibility for government and non-government schools, but I don't think each individual school is covered under FOI.

@RichardTaylor I'm not sure if you have any additional insight which you could offer here?

benrfairless commented 9 years ago

I've spoken with Margaret from the ACT Government to clarify how the directorate would process a request. Generally speaking, schools would refer the request to the Directorate anyway and private schools aren't covered under FOI.

Suggest we:

Are there any objections @openaustralia/team-right-to-know @openaustralia/owners

henare commented 9 years ago

@brfairless any reason to not just delete the schools?

benrfairless commented 9 years ago

I was thinking if people search for their school, it would be better to at least list it with instructions on how to make a request to DET, but I'm just as happy to delete them.

henare commented 9 years ago

Yeah it could also help Google juice too I guess. Let's have a think about it.

henare commented 9 years ago

I've split out the question of what to do with the ACT into #482.

This issue is still open since we need to work out what the story is with schools in other states.

henare commented 9 years ago

Some hospitals in Victoria come under the banner of a district health authority. I included their names in the notes field so they're still searchable but all the requests will go to the one authority.

This probably wouldn't work for schools since there'd be heaps listed under the department of education.