Using our formal powers

Notice powers

We may issue a notice requiring you to give information stored on a computer. We may require you to produce the information in either electronic form or as paper documents, or both.

Our notices may require the production of electronic information at any place that we reasonably nominate, including your premises.

Access powers

When using our access powers, we may ask to copy information from your computer system to an electronic storage device, and will provide copies of these to you on request.

We will also provide you with a letter confirming our receipt of the downloaded information, if required.

We will not operate your computer system unless we are taking formal access and you have chosen not to access it for us.

If we need to operate your computer system, we will usually:

• have our computer specialists access your computer
• give you a reasonable opportunity to be present during the access
• record the steps we take to search for and copy your data.

Copying electronic information

We may find that a large number of the documents we require are stored on your computer. Our officers must make an effort to determine the relevance of those documents before copying them.

Providing reasonable facilities and assistance

As the occupier of land, premises or a place being accessed, you must provide us with reasonable use of your facilities and assistance to extract relevant information stored on computer if we need it.

We may require facilities and assistance to:

• make extracts or copies, whether hard copies or in electronic format
• access a computer including login codes, keys, passwords and software manuals
• copy an encrypted document for us – in this situation, you may need to remove the encryption, provide the password or operate the computer for us.

You may prefer to operate your computer, work together with us to enter passwords, and assist us to locate the information we need on your computer system.