Preliminary pages

Publication date: 2019

ISSN 1839-5155

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You are free to share, copy, redistribute, adapt, transform and build upon the materials in this report, except the Commonwealth Coat of Arms. Please attribute the content of this publication as: Office of the Australian Information Commissioner Annual Report 2018–19.

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Letter of transmittal

The Hon Christian Porter MP
Attorney-General
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

Dear Attorney,

I am pleased to provide to you, for presentation to the Parliament, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s (OAIC’s) Annual Report 2018–19 for the year ending 30 June 2019.

This report has been prepared for the purposes of s 46 of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (PGPA Act), which requires that I prepare and provide an annual report to you for presentation to the Parliament.

Section 30 of the Australian Information Commissioner Act 2010 (AIC Act) requires the Information Commissioner to prepare an annual report — under aforementioned s 46 of the PGPA Act — on the OAIC’s operations, including a report on freedom of information matters (defined in s 31 of the AIC Act) and privacy matters (defined in s 32 of the AIC Act).

The freedom of information matters include a summary of the data collected from Australian Government ministers and agencies in relation to activities under the Freedom of Information Act 1982.

I certify that the OAIC has prepared a fraud risk assessment and fraud control plan. We also have a number of appropriate fraud prevention, detection, investigation, reporting and data collection mechanisms in place. The OAIC has taken all reasonable measures to minimise the incidence of fraud.

I certify that this report has been prepared in line with the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Amendments (Non-Corporate Commonwealth Entity Annual Reporting) Rule 2016.

Yours sincerely,

Angelene Falk
Australian Information Commissioner
Australian Privacy Commissioner

12 September 2019

Contents

Part 1: Overview

• About the OAIC
• Purpose
• Commissioner’s review
• Our year at a glance
• Our structure
• Communication and collaboration

Part 2: Performance

• Our annual performance statement
• Overall performance
• Privacy
• Privacy assessments
• Privacy awareness
• Freedom of information (FOI)
• FOI agency resources

Part 3: Management and accountability

• Corporate governance
• External scrutiny
• Human resources
• Procurement
• Other requirements

Part 4: Financial statements

Part 5: Appendices

• Appendix A: Agency resource statement and resources for outcomes
• Appendix B: Executive remuneration
• Appendix C: Memoranda of understanding
• Appendix D: Privacy statistics
• Appendix E: FOI statistics
• Appendix F: Acronyms and abbreviations
• Appendix G: Correction of material errors
• Appendix H: List of requirements
• Appendix I: Index