84 ANNUAL REPORT 2017 F. MINISTRY OF DEFENCE No statements on cases concluded in 2017 have been published. G. MINISTRY OF JUSTICE The following statements on cases concluded in 2017 have been published: 2017-4. Decision not to process request for access to documents because it would require a disproportionate amount of resources should have been made earlier A man complained to the Ombudsman because the Ministry of Justice had made a decision on 23 September 2016 not to process his request of 17 March 2016 for access to documents. The request had originally been made to the National Police, which had forwarded it to the Ministry as the National Police was of the opinion that the request concerned documents which were part of a case concerning legislation. The grounds given by the Ministry for its decision were that further proces­ sing would require a disproportionate amount of resources, cf. section 9(2) paragraph (1) of the Access to Public Administration Files Act. The Ministry explained that prior to its decision, it had already spent more than 25 hours on processing, which included identifying the documents forwarded by the National Police in the Ministry’s own records system and going through the documents identified in order to assess whether they were (still) part of a case concerning legislation. The Ombudsman found no grounds for criticising the Ministry’s decision to decline to process the request to conclusion. However, the Ombudsman was of the opinion that the Ministry should have determined much earlier that processing the request to conclusion would require a disproportionate amount of resources. Although a certain amount of processing is necessary to assess the expected amount of resources required to process a request to conclusion, a decision with reference to section 9(2) paragraph (1) of the Access to Public Administration Files Act was in the Ombudsman’s opinion to be made relatively soon after receipt of the request.