Priority is given to requests for information for native title purposes and any requests, for example, where proof of age or Aboriginality is required. Due to the demands for information from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for family history information, Community and Personal Histories staff are almost entirely dedicated to answering these requests leaving little time to index the records. We rely on part-time administrative staff and volunteers to index those records created by the Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy and Development and its predecessor agencies. The indexing of records relating to Indigenous people and communities created by other government agencies is at the moment beyond the means of our unit and we rely on volunteers like Paul Mackett who has produced over 140 volumes of indexes to mainly Queensland Government records relating to Indigenous peoples. As Community and Personal Histories only has responsibilities for its own department's records, this has a number of ramifications for clients wishing to access restricted records from other government agencies.
Most clients are keen to find information quickly.
This inturn means encountering different procedures for accessing records held on restricted access. At present the access policy used by Community and Personal Histories is not utilised by other departments. In many departments researchers have to apply for information through Freedom of Information which can be costly and clients sometimes have to wait more than a year to receive their information. There is also no across Government commitment to indexing records relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Finding information from another department, particularly historical information, at the moment largely relies on whether those records have been indexed by someone like Paul Mackett.