Glossary

Every Veil and official-information term you’ll meet, in plain language. Linked terms open the deeper reference.

A

Attestation: The case-level formal statement that the disclosure decision is made: an assigned Final Approver (or assigned Lead) chooses the “Disclosure outcome” and presses “Attest case complete” on “Finalise & Close”. External packages cannot be generated until the case is fully attested.
Audit trail: The immutable, per-case log of every action — who, what role, what target, when. Entries cannot be modified or deleted. Found on the case’s “Audit Trail” tab; exportable as CSV or PDF.

Bulk review: The case-wide page (opened with “Bulk Review” from the Documents tab) that applies one redaction decision across many documents at once, in three steps: auto-accept by confidence, auto-clear structured PII, and “Review by reach”.

Case (request): One official-information request and everything attached to it: documents, detections, decisions, schedule, audit trail, and deadline. Also called a request.
Chain of custody: A generated report reconstructing a case’s full decision trail — suitable for an Ombudsman review. Included in the Internal and Ombudsman packages and available from “Reports”.
Confidence: Veil’s 0–100% score of how sure the detection layer is. High-confidence routine detections can be accepted in bulk; low confidence always deserves a human look.
Custom rules: Agency-specific detection rules — keywords, patterns and entities mapped to withholding grounds — that run alongside the AI. Managed by the Lead and Senior Reviewer. Rules detect; they never redact.

Deadline health: The dashboard classification of every case against its statutory deadline: “On track”, “Urgent”, or “Overdue”.
Detection: One piece of potentially withholdable content Veil has flagged — a name, a phone number, a privileged sentence. Every detection starts pending; a person decides each one.
Decision states: Each detection card shows where it stands: “to decide” (pending), “redacted” (withhold), or “kept visible” (release).
Document states: The review journey of a document: “Ready for Review” → “In Review” → “Reviewed (Initial)” → “Signed Off” (frozen) → “Released”. “Error” means processing failed, with a plain-English reason.

Edit lock: Only one person can edit a document at a time. Others see “This document is read-only — another reviewer is editing it.” A Lead can take over a stale lock.
Export package: The output bundle built at export. Three types: Requester (screened, the only one for external release), Internal (adds audit evidence), Ombudsman (adds unredacted originals).

Fail-closed: Veil’s safety posture at export: if verification finds a leak — or cannot run — the external package is blocked. “Couldn’t verify” is not “clean”; a block is fixed, never bypassed.
Final approval (sign-off): The per-document decision by a Final Approver or Lead (“Final Approval” → “Confirm Approval”) that sets “Signed Off” and freezes the document’s redaction set.
Free and frank opinions: A withholding ground protecting candid internal advice and opinions so officials can speak plainly (LGOIMA s 7(2)(f)(i) / OIA s 9(2)(g)(i)).
Freeze: After final sign-off (and at release, case-wide) the redaction set is locked — detections can no longer change. Problems must be sent back before the freeze.

Lead (request manager): The role that owns requests end to end: creates cases, assigns work, extends deadlines, releases and closes. Shown on screen as “LGOIMA Lead” or “OIA Lead”.
LGOIMA: The Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 — the disclosure law for councils. Withholding sections s 6 / s 7 / s 17; review right s 27(3); deadline per s 12.

My Queue: The work list of every document awaiting review — “Ready for Review”, “In Review”, or “Submitted” — across all the cases you can see (not just those assigned to you).

OCR: Optical character recognition — the cloud service that reads every uploaded document. If it’s unavailable, uploads show “Error” until it recovers.
OIA: The Official Information Act 1982 — the disclosure law for central government. Withholding sections s 6 / s 9 / s 18; review right s 28(3); deadline per s 15.
Ombudsman: The independent oversight body for both Acts. A dissatisfied requester can ask the Ombudsman to review your decision — which is why defensibility matters.

Pattern detection: The always-on layer that finds structured NZ identifiers (phone numbers, emails, IRD numbers, addresses, bank accounts, passports) at high confidence.
Public-interest test: The balancing some grounds require: information may only be withheld if the withholding interest is not outweighed by the public interest in release (LGOIMA s 7 / OIA s 9).

Redaction (preview vs permanent): In review, “Redacted” is a visual preview only. At export, accepted redactions are burned in and the withheld text is destroyed — there is no undo.
Regime: Which Act your instance runs under — LGOIMA (councils) or OIA (central government). Fixed at activation; only wording and grounds differ, plus one LGOIMA-only tool (s 48 public-excluded).
Release: The Lead’s terminal action (“Mark as released”) after the response has gone to the requester: it freezes the case and all documents and stamps the disclosure date. Irreversible.
[REVIEW REQUIRED]: The flag on sensitive detection types — legal privilege, safety, law enforcement and similar — that must be decided individually. Every bulk-accept path skips them.
Reviewer note: An optional note added with a ground in the grounds editor. It appears in the withholding schedule — write it as you’d want the requester or Ombudsman to read it.

Send back (request changes): A senior tier returning a document to “In Review” (“Request Changes” → “Send Back”), usually with a reason. Only possible before final approval.
Separation of duties: The independence rule at sign-off: you cannot finally approve a document whose detections you reviewed yourself. On by default.
Statutory deadline: The legal response clock — 20 working days from receipt (LGOIMA s 12 / OIA s 15), assigned automatically at intake. Leads can formally extend it, with the reason audit-trailed.

Unlocatable: A red badge meaning an accepted detection’s text could not be found in the document, so it was not redacted there. Fix the detection text or escalate — the export verifier remains the final authority.

Verification: The automated post-export check that accepted redactions are genuinely gone from the output files. External packages fail closed on any leak or if the check cannot run.
Visibility scope: What you can see, set separately from role: department scope (cases involving your department) or org-wide. The Administrator has no case access at all.

Withholding ground: The section of the Act that justifies withholding a piece of information — for example privacy (LGOIMA s 7(2)(a) / OIA s 9(2)(a)). Every redacted detection needs one before export.
Withholding schedule: The generated document listing every withheld item with its ground and reasoning — sent to the requester (screened) and relied on in any Ombudsman review.

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