Asking us for information

We're happy to provide information about our organisation and its operations. We're not subject to the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA), but it's important to us that we're as accountable as other parts of the public sector.

If you want some information about our organisation, please get in touch. We prefer requests in writing (letter or email), because that helps us to understand what you want to know. We'll get back in touch if we have any questions.

As with all correspondence, you can expect us to acknowledge your request as soon as we receive it, and to provide you with a reply once we have had a chance to assess your request. Wherever possible, we try to work within the time frames set out in the OIA.

Please note that we won't usually disclose information from our statutory functions, such as information from individual audit files. All auditors are obliged to keep the information they gather confidential. This is an important and long-established way of encouraging entities to give their auditors open access to internal and sensitive information.

This professional obligation of confidentiality is recognised in our Public Audit Act 2001 and limits our ability to disclose information from our audit work.

Our Public Audit Act 2001 balances that confidentiality with an overarching power for the Auditor-General to decide when and how to disclose information arising from our work. This power lets us disclose information when we consider that to be necessary for effective public accountability. We think carefully about what information to include in the reports that we release as we prepare them.

Page last updated: 19 May 2022