Office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner. Guide to LA FOIP, Chapter3, Access to Records. Updated 5 May 2023. 75 1. Fees for Searching Fees for searching for a responsive record are pursuant to subsection 5(3) of The Local Authority Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Regulations. The local authority should develop a search strategy when preparing its fee estimate. For more on search strategies, see Search for Records earlier in this Chapter. The Commissioner has found that it is not reasonable to charge an applicant a fee for work already completed before the applicant has agreed to pay the fee.124 Local authorities should not complete the work when fee estimates are being prepared. It should be a true estimate. Completing the entire search before an applicant has agreed to pay fees or has the opportunity to narrow the search is a potential waste of a local authority’s resources. This is supported by the language found at subsection 9(4) of LA FOIP, which indicates a deposit is paid by the applicant “before a search is commenced for the records”. Fees for search time consists of every half hour of manual search time required to locate and identify responsive records. For example: • Staff time involved with searching for records. • Examining file indices, file plans or listings of records either on paper or electronic. • Pulling paper files/specific paper records out of files. • Reading through files to determine whether records are responsive. Search time does not include: • Time spent to copy the records. • Time spent going from office to office or off-site storage to look for records. • Having someone review the results of the search. Generally, the following has been applied: • It should take an experienced employee 1 minute to visually scan 12 pages of paper or electronic records to determine responsiveness. • It should take an experienced employee 5 minutes to search one regular file drawer for responsive file folders. • It should take 3 minutes to search one active email account and transfer the results to a separate folder or drive. is payable at the time access is given. See SK OIPC Review Report 258-2022 at [35] to [43] for more on this provision. 124 SK OIPC Review Reports 146-2015 and 147-2015 at [16] to [19], 115-2016 at [15].
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