Shadow Minister for Health Leanne Castley has asked the ACT Ombudsman to review a ‘baffling’ decision by ACT Health to heavily redact a Freedom of Information request for a staff survey of its Digital Solutions Division (DSD).

Ms Castley said the parts of the final report that had been released to her under FOI appears to have redacted all negative discussion, whereas positive comments had been released.

“The starkest example is a section on ‘Identified strengths’ which has been released almost in full, whereas ‘Specific areas of concern’ is heavily redacted,” Ms Castley said.

“Releasing only positive commentary and not the negative erodes confidence and potentially decreases future participation in the survey because staff could feel their feedback had been disregarded.

“The redaction of negative commentary goes directly against the Minister’s comments last week when speaking about the DHR that she is committed to providing as much information as possible to ensure transparency.

“We know this Labor-Greens Government is anything but transparent when it comes to the many failures of the ACT health system and this heavily redacted FOI request reinforces that perception.”

The recent staff survey or ‘health check’ of DSD, which is implementing the Digital Health Record (DHR), comprised an online survey completed by 99 of the Division’s 388 staff, individual interviews and three focus groups.

Despite the pages which were released stating no less than five times that responses were anonymised, unattributed and deidentified, ACT Health is claiming that to release answers and verbatim comments would unreasonably disclose participants’ “personal information,” which would then “reduce engagement,” and “diminish.. honest and truthful participation”.

ACT Health is even going so far as to claim that its paramount duty is to “protect staff from experiencing stress and anxiety in anticipating uncertainty in this circumstance,” which “could… negatively impact on the wider directorate.”

“This is puzzling enough, given all survey responses were anonymised, but bizarrely, in a section on Free Text Survey Responses, five positive verbatim comments are disclosed, while apparently critical responses are redacted,” Ms Castley said.

“Full disclosure would promote discussion of public affairs, enhance accountability, contribute to informed debate and assist inquiry into deficiencies in the administration of DSD,” Ms Castley concluded.