Under the Act on Access to Information held by Public Institutions, when may a public institution close a repeat information disclosure request instead of deciding it again?
General information · Not legal advice
Material to check
In a practice file of this kind, we read the earlier request and the notification of the decision on disclosure the requester received, because the provision turns on that notification and on whether the new request repeats the old one. Papers recording how the earlier request was handled as a civil petition, and any record of the requester's grounds for asking again, bear on the listed situations.
These are types of material to look for, not evidence already verified by PRO SE.
Where readings differ
One reading takes the provision as a whole: despite the general duty to decide, where a requester who received the notification of the decision asks for the same information again without justifiable reason, or where the earlier request was handled as a civil petition and the same request is made again, the institution may, after weighing the information's nature, its content similarity and relevance to the earlier request, and the circumstances making an identical answer unavoidable, close the request and must tell the requester it has been closed.
Another reading stresses that the justifiable-reason condition is written only for the first listed situation, while the weighing of those factors applies to both and closure stays discretionary in each, so it also leaves open what counts as a justifiable reason and what the notice of closure must contain beyond telling the requester that closure happened.
Your judgment
On the papers in the file, what could show whether the repeat request seeks the same information, and whether any reason for asking again was a justifiable one?
PRO SE does not make this decision or keep a case record on this public site.When to reconsider
We look again if the provision is amended to define a justifiable reason or to set what the notice of closure must contain, or if a court decision explains when a repeat request counts as the same request.