154 ANNUAL REPORT 2015 M. PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE The following statement on a case concluded in 2015 has been published: 2015-59. Documents exchanged in connection with ministerial advice and assistance. Information to be extracted. Precise information required about where publicly available information can be found A journalist complained to the Ombudsman because the Prime Minister’s Office had denied him access to four documents. One of the documents was an e-mail from the Prime Minister’s Office to the Ministry of Justice in which the former asked the latter for comments to be used by the then Prime Minister for the purpose of replying to a question from Parliament. The other three documents were e-mails containing contributions from the Prime Minister’s Office to material to be used by the Minister of Justice. The Ombudsman agreed with the Prime Minister’s Office that the four documents had been exchanged in connection with ministerial advice and assistance and were therefore in principle exempt from access (section 24(1)(ii) of the Access to Public Administration Files Act). The Ombudsman was of the opinion that three of the documents contained information which was subject to extraction. At the same time, however, the Ombudsman agreed with the Prime Minister’s Office that the information was publicly available and that therefore the Prime Minister’s Office was not obliged to extract and provide access to the information (section 28(2)(iii) of the Access to Public Administration Files Act). This raised the question how precisely an authority applying section 28(2)(iii) of the Act must refer to where the information can be found. The Ombudsman obtained several statements on the question from the Prime Minister’s Office. In addition, the question was discussed at a number of meetings between the Ombudsman and the two ministries. The Ombudsman subsequently agreed with the Prime Minister’s Office (and the Ministry of Justice) that section 28(2)(iii) of the Access to Public Administration Files Act was to be interpreted to mean that when publicly available information is not extracted under the provision, the authority’s reference to where the information can be found must be so precise that the person who has asked for access is able to determine which specific information has not been extracted.