The Intake and Early Resolution Unit (IERU) was introduced in June 2008 as part of the Office’s efforts to strengthen and streamline its complaints-handling process in order to eliminate its historical backlog of cases and to improve service to Canadians and federal institutions.

The IERU is divided in two groups; the Intake team and the Early Resolution team. All complaints made under the Access to Information Act (the Act) will be initially assessed by the IERU.

The Intake team will be the initial point of contact of the Office for receipt of all complaints. This team will be responsible for many administrative tasks associated with complaint investigations. It will review the documentation related to the original access request at issue, which was provided with the complaint, and it will gather from the complainant and/or the responsible institution any information which is necessary to undertake the initial assessment. Once sufficient information has been gathered, the complaint will be assessed to ensure that it is made in accordance with the Act before proceeding through the process (Annex A).

The Early Resolution team will then review the complaint against a set of factors to determine if it can be considered for the early resolution stream (Annex B). When early resolution is not possible, the complaint will follow the more formal investigative stream process outside of the IERU.

Using the same triage system in both streams, each complaint will be prioritized according to a set of objective criteria (Annex C). The methodology for implementing prioritization based on these criteria is under development and will be reviewed and assessed during the course of the year.