SA opposition hit with $3 million FOI bill

The South Australian opposition has been hit with a $3 million bill to process freedom of information applications that cover more than half a million documents.

Opposition education and training spokesman David Pisoni made the six applications which relate to training, apprentices and a departmental computer system.

The applications requested information about the time between employees completing an apprenticeship and the formal sign-off by Training and Apprenticeship Services for 2012 and 2013.

Departmental officers provided a cost breakdown for processing each of the applications which totalled almost $3 million.

"There's a high price for openness, accountability and transparency in South Australia," Mr Pisoni said in a statement on Tuesday.

"Paying almost $3 million to find information which the department should already have is hardly promoting government openness and ministerial and departmental accountability."

The state government says freedom of information requests are processed by government departments, independent of any minister's office.

A further education and employment department chief, Ray Garrand, says Mr Pisoni's request involved more than half a million documents which the department ruled would take 62,527 hours to find.

State MPs are not required to pay for the processing of freedom of information requests if the cost is assessed at less than $1000.