From 2014 to 2019, agencies reported the following difficulties in administering the FOI Act:

• the increased number of FOI requests being received;
• the increased number of FOI requests being processed by the agency at the same time;
• the increased number of voluminous FOI requests;
• the increased volume of records held by agencies in a variety of forms and locations;
• resourcing issues including an inability to find suitably skilled FOI officers;
• resourcing issues including staff in smaller agencies balancing their FOI workload with other responsibilities;
• costs recovered do not reflect costs expended in processing FOI requests;
• the reduced timeframe agencies have to process requests in accordance with section 21;
• increased interaction with OVIC as a result of FOI reviews and complaints; and
• third party consultation and impact on compliance with statutory timeframe.

These challenges were consistent from 2014 to 2019, with some changes following the 1 September 2017 amendments to the FOI Act, including the reduction in statutory processing time and new third party consultation requirements.