The complainant on leaving the employment of a large government department had requested a copy of her personnel file. She had received no response to the request so asked me to investigate a breach of information privacy principle 6 which gives the individual the right of access to their personal information.

I wrote to the department requiring an explanation as to why the request had not been answered. I also informed the department that s.92 of the Privacy Act empowered me to require production of the requested information within 20 working days. The department on receiving notice of the complaint promptly sent the file to the complainant. It was explained to me that the original letter had been mislaid and this accounted for the delay in responding to the request.

However the file did not contain all the information about the complainant from the time she had been working in the public service. She therefore wrote again requesting the full file. It was explained by the department that the reason for the incompleteness of her file was because the original request had not been sent to all the departments she had previously worked in.

Once the complainant had received the whole file she was satisfied with the outcome. As the complainant did not desire any further action be taken on the complaint I decided to discontinue my investigation pursuant to s.71(1)(d).

April 1994

Access to personal information - Former employer - Delay in responding to request - Reasons for discontinuing investigation - Privacy Act 1993, s 71(1)(d) - Information privacy principle 6