Overview of section 29 RTI Act

Section summary

An agency or Minister is not required to search a backup system for documents relevant to an access application.

Other relevant RTI/IP Act sections

Section 52 RTI Act

This section concerns refusal of access to documents on the basis that the documents are nonexistent or unlocatable. Before refusing access to certain documents on this ground, section 52(2) requires an agency or Minister to search for a document from a backup system if the agency or Minister considers that the document has been kept in, and is retrievable from, the back up system.

Schedule 5 RTI Act

Schedule 5 defines 'backup system' for the purposes of the RTI Act as:

a system that has, for disaster recovery purposes, copied electronic data onto a separate data storage medium, for example onto a backup tape.

Section 49 IP Act

Section 49 of the IP Act replicates section 29 of the RTI Act.