It can happen to you

From: [PERSON] @oipc.nl.ca
To: [me]
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2009 8:54:01 AM
Subject: RE: ATIPPA Practice

[...]

You ask if the requests are anonymized by the Coordinator. Our Office takes the position that, pursuant to section 39(2) of the ATIPPA, the disclosure of the personal information of the Applicant should be limited to the minimum amount necessary to respond to the access request. Therefore, the request should be anonymized and every effort should be made to protect the privacy of the Applicant.

You ask other than in the case of a request for an Applicant's personal information, why would the public body or anyone need to know the identity of the applicant. It seems to me that it would be only those cases where there is a request for the applicant's personal information that the name would be need to be disclosed.

In relation to the further guidelines on what constitutes a "need to know", our Office would be guided by the wording of section 39(2):

(2) The disclosure of personal information by a public body shall be limited to the minimum amount of information necessary to accomplish the purpose for which it is disclosed.

At present, our Office does not keep statistics on how often the identity of requesters is released to the public body.