122 ANNUAL REPORT 2014 However, the Ombudsman found that more information in the document had to be considered subject to extraction than the two paragraphs to which the Ministry of Justice had given access. The information concerned a paragraph in which the party secretary made a number of statements. The Ombudsman emphasised that the information had to be considered information about the ‘factual basis’ of the case and that the information was ‘relevant to the case’. The Ombudsman referred to the fact that the information was part of the grounds on which the Ministry had assessed the case and that it was relevant to the case as it appeared that the Ministry had commented on the statements and to a certain extent also given its advice on that basis. The Ombudsman therefore asked the Ministry of Justice to resume the case and make a new decision with regard to this additional information. The Ministry of Justice subsequently resumed the case and gave access to the paragraph in question. 2014-36. REFUSED INCREASED ACCESS TO FILES BASED ON AUTHORITY’S RESOURCE USE. ANONYMISATION A journalist complained to the Ombudsman because the Immigration Service and the Ministry of Justice had given a (partial) refusal to his request for access to at least 600 cases in which asylum seekers had been refused healthcare treatment. The documents included in the request for access contained, among other things, information on the healthcare details of the individual asylum seekers, and the documents consequently contained information which was exempt from access pursuant to section 30(i) of the Access to Public Administration Files Act. In their decisions, the authorities had taken into account that the Immigration Service would have to use at least 15 minutes per case ‒ meaning at least 150 hours or 20 full working days ‒ in order to comply with the request for access. On this basis, the Ombudsman did not have grounds for criticising the Immigration Service’s opinion that anonymisation of the relevant information could not take place without considerable use of the Service’s resources and that a refusal to the request had consequently been given pursuant to section 30(i) of the

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents