In evidence tendered to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, CenITex, the state government's centre for information technology excellence, says it cannot easily search its email archive and must spend tens of thousands of dollars purchasing new equipment to retrieve and restore emails from an external company.
The evidence was in response to two FOI requests from The Age regarding complaints about CenITex contractors, the electronic diaries of key executives, customer feedback results and CenITex's gift and hospitality register.
The statements of two CenITex staff showed the process - which it says would involve reading and checking 1,521,166 emails sent during a 22-month timeframe - could take, as a conservative estimate, 24 years and cost up to $970,252. The Age argued its request for emails about complaints could be narrowed to the complaints process and it did not require a check of all 1,521,166 emails.

In its evidence to the tribunal, CenITex said it did not have a separate electronic database for emails and other documents that relate to complaints.
CenITex's position is unusual in the Victorian government - most departments and agencies have easily searchable email archives and do not require an expensive restoration of archives to meet FOI requests.
In his statement, CenITex's FOI officer Ross Gilmour said he would also need to check 637,000 "tickets" that record calls to CenITex's service desk. This, he said, would constitute a thorough and diligent search for complaints and feedback. This part of the search alone would take, he said, 606 working weeks, or about 12 years.