DPEA Stakeholder Forum submission

The DPEA uses the Objective Connect (“OC”) platform for the lodging of documents in appeals and inquiries. Many users find the system difficult and unintuitive. The published guidance explains how documents are uploaded and transferred to the DPEA case website, and users reasonably assume that once material is uploaded it has been formally lodged.

In practice, however, documents may be intercepted and rejected before they appear on the DPEA website. Crucially, the published guidance gives no clear warning that OC operates as a filtering or gatekeeping mechanism, nor that documents submitted through it may be refused publication at the discretion of a Reporter or member of staff.

That lack of transparency is problematic. Users are entitled to assume that OC is an administrative conduit, not a prior-selection process controlling what evidence reaches the public case file.

The current guidance states that parties should upload only documents requested at the pre-inquiry meeting. In reality, that restriction is frequently unworkable. Relevant evidence often emerges later, and parties must be free to lodge material they consider necessary to support their case.

In any adversarial process, parties must be entitled to decide what evidence and submissions they wish to place before the decision-maker. Questions of relevance and weight should be determined openly and fairly, not through undisclosed pre-screening before material reaches the public domain. Article 6 ECHR requires fairness and “equality of arms”. A procedural under which material can be excluded without transparency risks undermining that principle.

The issue is not bad faith on the part of the DPEA. The concern is institutional fairness and public confidence. Where material is rejected before publication, users and participating groups may perceive the process as selective or discriminatory, whether justified or not. That perception damages confidence in the inquiry and appeals system and creates unnecessary dispute and delay.

Users therefore seek a clear assurance that, absent material which is unlawful, abusive or plainly scandalous, documents uploaded through Objective Connect will be transferred to the DPEA case website and treated as lodged submissions, rather than being withheld on discretionary grounds such as a view that sufficient information has already been provided on a particular issue.

Objective Connect should function as a transmission mechanism, not as an undisclosed barrier between a party and the public case process.