ACT government public servants can often focus too heavily on what not to release in freedom-of-information requests, the territory's Ombudsman says.
ACT Ombudsman Iain Anderson said there were cases where agencies needed to think more about why information needed to be released for public interest reasons.
"We have been either fully setting aside or varying a number of decisions through the review process. It's not uncommon to see applications where directorates have, perhaps, not engaged as fully as they need to with the balancing process," he said.
"Sometimes agencies focus more strongly on the reasons why it's not in the public interest to disclose and they don't focus as much as they could on the reasons why it's in the public interest to disclose it.
"To do that balancing exercise properly, you need to give full attention to both sets of reasons."
The Ombudsman has released 13 reviews of decisions so far this year.
The annual report for 2022-23 showed the Ombudsman received 41 reviews for freedom of information over the financial year, and 20 of these were finalised.
Of these 20, the Ombudsman varied 11 cases, set aside the original decision and ordered a new one in four cases, and confirmed the agency's decision in five.
Mr Anderson said that when he began, directorates had sometimes focused too much on certain documents being cabinet-in-confidence to prevent the release of other information that was not in-confidence.
He said he had raised freedom-of-information requests in meetings with various director-generals. He said there was nothing of particular concern and did not believe information was being withheld due to directorate fears of being embarrassed.
The Ombudsman was asked the questions in the context of an ACT Health FOI decision that was reversed last year. The documents related to survey results from the digital services division, which had been redacted to remove most of the negative comments.
The Ombudsman found ACT Health's decision to redact negative results because it would not be in the public interest to release them was contradicted by its own decision to release the survey's positive findings. About 30 per cent of the total document was released following the Ombudsman's review.
Mr Anderson said there was some information in the survey results that could have identified some people and this information was not released.
"They were putting a lot of weight on the fact that they were collecting the material in confidence and they were erring on the side of not disclosing anything that could potentially identify people," he said.
Mr Anderson said there had been a significant growth in material being proactively disclosed since he became Ombudsman.
