126 ANNUAL REPORT 2015 secretariat services. The Ombudsman recommended the Board of Equal Treatment to reopen the case and make a new decision. 2015-26. Insufficient grounds given for partial refusal to grant access to files. Extraction duty A journalist complained to the Ombudsman because he had received a partial refusal from the Ministry of Employment to a request for access to information about the payment of social benefits to persons who had departed for Syria. It was the Ombudsman’s opinion that the grounds given by the Ministry for the decision far from satisfied the requirements of section 24 of the Public Administration Act and the established practice. It appeared nowhere ‒ neither from the decision itself nor from the accompanying files list ‒ which documents had been exempted from access or according to which provisions in the Access to Public Administration Files Act the individual documents had been withheld. Nor did it say if the documents included information which was subject to extraction but which had not been given to the journalist after all ‒ because it was already publicly available or had been released via other documents. The Ombudsman considered whether the grounds given by the Ministry were so insufficient that he could not investigate the case, but he did find, however, that the Ministry’s information provided a sufficient basis for an investigation. The Ombudsman could not criticise that the Ministry of Employment had exempted a number of documents from access pursuant to section 23(1)(i) of the Access to Public Administration Files Act on internal documents and section 24(1) of the Act concerning ministerial advice and assistance documents. However, the Ombudsman did find that two of the exempted documents contained more information about the factual basis of the case than the Ministry had assumed, and that this information should therefore have been extracted pursuant to section 28(1) of the Access to Public Administration Files Act. The Ombudsman recommended that the Ministry of Employment reopen the case and make a new decision regarding access to the exempted information. The Ministry subsequently reopened the case and granted access in accordance with the Ombudsman’s comments. In addition, the Ministry took note of the Ombudsman’s criticism of the grounds given by the Ministry for its original decision.