When may a public agency under the Act on Access to Information held by Public Institutions treat a disclosure request as a civil petition instead of deciding disclosure?
General information · Not legal advice
Material to check
For this exercise, we read the disclosure request as received, the paper listing what information the agency holds and manages, and the correspondence showing whether the content reads as a complaint or an inquiry, since each bears on a condition the provision attaches.
These are types of material to look for, not evidence already verified by PRO SE.
Where readings differ
One reading treats this as an option held by the agency that receives the request: where the requested information is not information that a public agency holds and manages, or the content is a complaint or inquiry that is hard to regard as a disclosure request under this Act, and the matter can be handled as a civil petition under the Civil Petitions Handling Act, the agency may handle it as a civil petition rather than decide disclosure.
Another reading marks the limit: the provision requires both conditions together, one of the two listed situations and the ability to handle the matter as a civil petition under that other Act, while leaving open who decides that ability and what handling as a civil petition does to the period set for deciding disclosure.
Your judgment
If one request names both information the agency does not hold and information it does hold, how could the file show whether the whole request leaves the disclosure procedure?
PRO SE does not make this decision or keep a case record on this public site.When to reconsider
We revisit this if the provision is amended to change when a request may be handled as a civil petition, or if a court decision, applying the Civil Petitions Handling Act, states when that handling is available.