Last week, the information regulator issued PAIA compliance notices to several public and private bodies in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA). Although the regulator’s notice is addressed to public bodies and to “Deputy Information Officers”, many private bodies received the notice too. The notice contains some corrective actions for bodies to take. Bodies who received the notice have 14 days to comply with it by uploading the correct forms to their websites. We contacted the regulator to get some more insight into the notice and we’ve summarised the main points for you.

All bodies should remove any mention of the old forms and link to the new forms.

Compliance notice in terms of section 83(3)(d) of the Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000

This is the title of the notice. Section 83(3)(d) of PAIA empowers the regulator to “recommend to a public or private body that the body make such changes in the manner in which it administers this Act as the Commission considers advisable”.

We asked the regulator for some context about why bodies have received this notice. The regulator responded by saying that they are “mandated to monitor compliance with the PAIA. In particular, the regulator can, where it deems necessary, request public and private bodies to make changes in the way bodies administer PAIA. PAIA is national legislation emanating from the Constitution, therefore compliance with PAIA is mandatory. PAIA applies to both public and private bodies.” The regulator added that this is the basis for the receiving the notices.

What does the PAIA compliance notice say?

In the notice, the regulator highlights that certain public and private bodies have been linking to incorrect forms on their websites. For example, they’ve been linking to repealed forms A, B and C (Request for access to record of a public body, notice of internal appeal and Request for access to record of private body respectively).

If the forms have letters, they are old. The latest have numbers.

Those who received the notice must upload the correct prescribed forms on their websites. The correct forms are:

  • Form 02: Request for Access to Record [Regulation 7] – Public and private bodies
  • Form 03: Outcome of request and of fees payable [Regulation 8] – Public and private bodies.
  • Form 04: Internal Appeal Form [Regulation 9] – Public bodies only.

Why the confusion?

Many were confused about the compliance notice and what corrective action they needed to take to comply. For example, “Deputy Information Officers” is used in the context of public bodies. However, the content of the notice refer to private bodies too. Furthermore, many private bodies have linked to Form 02 in their PAIA manuals already. Should they update their PAIA manuals further?

Actions you must take regards this PAIA notice

The regulator provided us with some swift responses to our questions and gave some clarity on the notice:

  • The notice applies to public and private bodies. The regulator said that Deputy Information Officers include private bodies as required in section 56 of POPIA. The inclusion of the private body requirements is premised on the requirement for private bodies to have deputy information officers.
  • Private bodies who received this notice must ensure that they link to Forms 02 and 03. Private bodies can ignore Form 4 because it only applies to public bodies.
  • Private bodies can link to the forms from their PAIA manuals. However, they must also link to the forms separately from their PAIA manual. [IMPORTANT!]

This means that private bodies must create links to the forms somewhere on their websites to enable a requester to access the form without having to download your PAIA manual.

  • The regulator clarified that bodies must link to the forms on the regulator’s website because they are editable PDFs. [IMPORTANT!] This requirement is in line with the objectives of PAIA.

You’ll notice that we’ve linked to the regulator’s PAIA forms page above. It might be a good idea to link to this page so that you are covered if the regulator updates the forms in the future.