Australian government agencies subject to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act) are required to publish a range of information on their websites to meet the Information Publication Scheme (IPS) requirements.

The Tax Practitioners Board (TPB) is an agency subject to the FOI Act and has prepared this agency plan as required by subsection 8(1) of the FOI Act.

The TPB is an independent statutory body created under the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 (TASA) and composed of members appointed by the responsible Minister. The TPB is responsible for regulating registered tax agents and business activity statement (BAS) agents (collectively known as ‘tax practitioners’). The TPB is also responsible for ensuring compliance with the TASA, including its Code of Professional Conduct.

Purpose

The purpose of this agency plan is to:

• assist us in planning and administering our IPS entry

• facilitate improved transparency about the entry

• indicate what information we propose to publish and how the information will be published on our website

• outline how we will otherwise comply with the IPS requirements under the FOI Act.

Objectives

This plan outlines how we intend to continue implementing arrangements to:

• manage the IPS entry using appropriate mechanisms and procedures

• proactively identify and publish all information required to be published (subsection 8(2) of the FOI Act)

• proactively identify and publish any other information to be published (subsection 8(4) of the FOI Act)

• review and ensure on a regular basis that information published under the IPS is accurate, up to date and complete (section 8B of the FOI Act)

• ensure that information published under the IPS is easily discoverable, understandable, machine readable, re-useable and transformable

• ensure satisfactory conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (Version 2) (WCAG 2.0)

• measure the success of our IPS entry by compliance review processes

• adopt best practice initiatives in implementing and administering our IPS entry.

Administering our IPS entry

The Secretary/Chief Executive Officer of the TPB is responsible for leading our compliance with the IPS. Our Corporate Services area, with the assistance of the Information Technology and Legal Units, will monitor our ongoing compliance with the IPS and ensure that our IPS entry is accurate, up-to-date and complete.

Our publishing framework, developed on the basis of our corporate strategies and policies will guide our document development, publishing and ongoing management of our IPS entry.

We have identified the information that we're required to publish in accordance with section 8(2) of the FOI Act. We will also undertake a periodical review of our current information to identify information that may be published in accordance with section 8(4) of the FOI Act.

We will arrange for IPS documents which are not available on our website, to be made available on request. We will publish on our website a list of any IPS documents that is not practical to publish online. The website will state that a person seeking access to any of these documents may contact our FOI Coordinator to arrange access.

IPS Information architecture

The IPS entry is published on our website under the following headings:

• Agency plan

• Who we are

• What we do

• Our reports and responses to Parliament

• Routinely requested information and disclosure log

• Consultation arrangements

• Contact us.

To ensure that our IPS entry is easily discoverable, understandable and machine-readable, we will:

• provide online content in a format that can be searched, copied and transformed wherever possible

• publish a sitemap on our website to help individuals identify the location of the IPS entry

• provide a search function for our website

• seek and respond to community feedback about the IPS entry.

Information required to be published under the IPS

The documents that we are required to publish under section 8(2) of the FOI Act are generally already available on our website. A link to these documents are also included on the IPS page. 

We publish these documents under the following headings.

Agency plan

• This agency plan.

Who we are

• This will include an organisational chart and information about statutory appointments to the Board.

• For statutory appointments, we will publish the name of the person appointed and the position to which the person is appointed.

What we do

• This will outline the function and decision-making powers of the TPB.

• This will also include links to information sheets, proposed guidelines, practice notes and explanatory papers relating to these functions and power.

Our reports and responses to Parliament

• This will include the full text of our annual reports tabled in Parliament.

Routinely requested information

• This will include information in documents to which we routinely give access in response to FOI requests.

• We will clearly identify these documents in our disclosure log published under section 11C of the FOI Act – which requires agencies to publish information contained in documents to which the agency has provided access under the FOI Act.

Consultation

• This will include information about how and to whom a comment may be submitted by members of the public where we undertake public consultation on a particular matter.

Contact us

• This will include the contact details to request access to our information or documents under the FOI Act.

Other information to be published under the IPS

We publish additional documents to our IPS entry, including the following:

• Our priorities - corporate and strategic plans, media releases and research

• Our lists - our public register which contains, as required under the TASA, registration details of registered and certain deregistered tax practitioners.

We will publish other information that we may identify (in addition to the information published under section 8(2) of the FOI Act), taking into account the objects of the FOI Act.

IPS compliance review

We will review this agency plan annually in conjunction with our overall strategic planning process.

We will review the operation of our IPS from time to time and will conduct a review of our IPS compliance, using self-assessment tools issued by the Information Commissioner or in reviews in conjunction with the Information Commissioner.