The Attorney General has asked the NSW Law Reform Commission to investigate the legislation and policies governing the handling of access applications for personal information. Link to further information

If you have made an application for access to personal information to a government agency we are interested in hearing about your experience and in your comments on the experience of others who have responded to this topic.

In particular, we are interested to know:

• if your application was made under privacy legislation or under freedom of information legislation or some other legislation;
• if you did not know the legislation under which you were applying for access to the information, if the government agency made that determination for you or if nothing was said about this topic;
• if your application was made specifically to obtain personal information about another individual, and, if so, for what purpose;
• if your application was refused because it contained personal information relating to another individual;
• if your application was granted but the information relating to other individuals was deleted from the document to which you sought access;
• if you received any explanation for the refusal of your request or the deletion of particular information from the document to which access was granted;
• how long your application took to be finalised;
• whether or not you were satisfied with the process and your reasons for satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

Comments will be accepted until 11 September 2009.