The Public Service Commission today released the Official Information Act statistics for the six months to December 2024.

The latest statistics cover 101 agencies that collectively completed 39,809 official information requests between July and December 2024.

Overall, agencies responded on time to 38,925, or 97.8 percent of requests, against 98.2 percent in the previous reporting period.

The average time to respond to all OIA requests, including extensions, across the Public Service departments and Crown entities, was 13.2 working days, compared with 13.1 days in the previous period.

The Public Service collects and publishes data on a range of measures, including the average time for agencies to respond to requests, and the use of extensions, transfers, and refusals.

Overall, only 7 percent of requests were extended, against 6.7 percent in the previous six months.

Of the 39,809 requests, 1059, or 2.7 percent, were transferred in full to be answered by other agencies.

Of the 9.7 percent of requests refused in full, most were refused because the information was either not held, did not exist, was already in the public arena or would soon be publicly available.

The Ombudsman notified agencies of 305 complaints, up from 238 for the previous six months. A total of 65 final opinions were made against agencies, or 0.27 percent of all requests completed. This was down from 84 final opinions in the previous period.

Hugo Vitalis, the Commission’s Deputy Chief Executive Strategy, Policy and Integrity, said the Public Service’s performance in responding to requests for official information remained high overall but there were always areas to improve for individual agencies.

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