Federal Access to Information law ‘critically sick’: new study

2015/10/19 Leave a comment

Confirms all the various articles and reports over the years, along with my experience:

The federal access-to-information law is “effectively crippled” as a means of promoting accountability, says a new study that tested open records legislation across the country.

The latest annual freedom of information audit by lobby group Newspapers Canada says long delays, staff shortages and blacked-out pages add up to an Access to Information Act “that just doesn’t work.”

The organization, which represents more than 800 newspapers, sent almost 450 access requests to federal government departments and Crown corporations, ministries, departments and agencies in all provinces and territories and to municipalities and police forces.

The report says the results revealed familiar, entrenched patterns, and some new ones.

In the digital age, it stresses, the willingness to disclose data in formats that can be read by computers is increasingly important and, once again, the audit found many public bodies “resistant to releasing information in these formats.”

People who want information from Canada’s cities could expect reasonably speedy service, while provinces, on average, took a little longer and the federal government trailed far behind.

Requesters who file an application under the federal Access to Information Act should be prepared for a long wait and to see more information withheld, the report says.

“There is no doubt that the federal access system is critically sick. Departments can take months to answer requests, even though the normal time from start to finish is supposed to be 30 days or fewer.”

 Source: Federal Access to Information law ‘critically sick’: new study | Toronto Star

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

Bringing Canada’s access to information back from the brink

2015/09/14 1 Comment

More a niche issue rather than one to attract general public attention but important and central to democratic government:

In 2009-10, the federal government logged 35,154 new access requests. That number nearly doubled in five years, to 60,105 requests in 2013-14.

But Michel Drapeau, a lawyer specializing in access law, doesn’t believe the system is suffering due to the increase in volume. Drapeau instead places the blame squarely on the “centre” of the government — the Privy Council Office, the department that supports the prime minister — and department’s willingness to run requests by them.

“To claim a delay becomes now not the exception but the normal course of events,” Drapeau said in an interview last week.

“Access to information is on a slow descent into irrelevance.”

There have been signs that the strain on the system is taking its toll. Summer students and temporary workers are being brought in to deal with “surges” in requests, which typically occur around a big news story. The situation lead one senior access officer to report a “critical shortage” of qualified staff to her superiors.

At the same time, the Conservative government has boasted of a record number of pages released to the public. The government repeatedly pointed to the volume of material released as a sign the system was healthy.

But according to Treasury Board data, only 27 per cent of those requests were “all disclosed” — uncensored — in 2013-14. A further 50 per cent were disclosed “in part,” which includes everything to documents with one line censored and records almost entirely blacked out.

Over their time in power, the Conservatives have made strides towards “open data,” releasing information and datasets collected by federal departments as a matter of course. While most of the files released to date are mapping files from Natural Resources Canada, several departments have released substantial files that can be accessed through the open.gc.ca portal.

But Teresa Scassa, a University of Ottawa professor who served on the federal open government advisory committee, said the government is less likely to voluntarily turn over sensitive or controversial documents — and that’s where access to information comes in.

“These are data sets that are useful to the private sector,” Scassa said of the government’s open data efforts to date.

“And that’s more the orientation of it rather than transparency or accountability, the kinds of things that journalists go after for example when they’re looking to see how governments are dealing with certain kinds of (issues).”

Information Commissioner’s Recommendations

In March, Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault released a comprehensive list of 85 recommendations to overhaul Canada’s access to information system. Broadly speaking, they include:

Maximize Disclosure — Overhaul exemptions that prohibit disclosure, create a public interest override, create a statutory obligation to declassify material.

Reduce delays — Limit extensions by government to a maximum of 60 days, limit internal consultations with other government agencies.

Expand coverage — Expand the institutions covered under access to information to Parliament, ministers’ offices, and the courts.

Toughen penalties — Create new offences for obstructing access, destroying or altering records, and prohibit failing to document decisions or substantial discussions.

Giving the watchdog teeth — Give the commissioner the power to order government documents released.

Source: Bringing Canada’s access to information back from the brink | Toronto Star

Filed under Government Tagged with

Missing in Ottawa? Government transparency

2015/09/08 Leave a comment

Sounds familiar.

When I was in government, we regularly used Blackberry PINs for sensitive stuff although I was always careful (I think) in my use of language as I always assumed that anything electronic is saved somewhere (and there was a CIBC case, I believe, where PINs were accessed). But hadn’t heard the term off-line used as a verb before:

But the “real problems” go even deeper than that. The revealing PMO emails have hinted at an even more secretive Ottawa, where staffers, diplomats and journalists communicate with each other by direct messages, private emails, or services such as LinkedIn—in other words, on any platform that cannot be exposed under the Access to Information Act, or can be erased before called for as evidence. Call it the Official Underground Ottawa.

“The rule is: Don’t write anything down on official channels that you wouldn’t want to see on the front of the newspaper,” one government source told me. We connected via direct message on Twitter, then used the phone. No email. “And, since the Duffy trial, people in government are even more cautious.”

So what happens in Underground Ottawa? No one uses official, on-the-record channels for the “real” problems. Everyone “off-lines”—it’s a verb. As one MP told me, “I never get on those email chains where cc’ing 10 people is normal. I insist on using the phone.” At the Duffy trial, we learned that key players in the PMO were using instant messaging and text messages to talk about Duffy, but none of it was entered as evidence.

In 2013, information commissioner Suzanne Legault investigated a range of government departments over their use of offline communication. She uncovered the secret door leading to Underground Ottawa, a world with no oversight, no rules and no transparency. Key information “is being irremediably deleted or lost,” she wrote. Legault concluded that retrieving messages was “practically impossible,” and the likelihood of getting instant messages from within a ministerial office was “non-existent.” No records means no accountability.

Source: Missing in Ottawa? Government transparency

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

How has Canada fared on resettling Syrian refugees? And government not releasing information.

2015/09/04 1 Comment

On how the Government avoids providing information that the public is entitled to:

It was clear, though, that the government had details about the number of arrivals on hand throughout the process. In December 2014, Alexander tabled in the House of Commons a written response to a question by NDP MP Paul Dewar indicating, as of three weeks previous, how many Syrian refugees had arrived and, of those, how many were privately sponsored and how many came with government assistance.

Alexander or his spokesman also made public statements in December and January updating these figures.

It stands to reason, then, that the government knows how many of the 10,000 promised spaces for Syrian refugees have so far been filled. They just won’t say.

Earlier this month, a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration (CIC) told me the information was “not available publicly.” The email from CIC went on to provide a link to make a request under the Access to Information Act.

This act is one of those creatively named pieces of legislation that don’t mean what their titles suggest they should. You file a request; weeks, months or sometimes years pass. What you finally receive is heavily redacted. Eventually, you stop asking. If it didn’t suggest such boggling cynicism on the part of the government, I’d swear that was the point.

I decided to play along and filed a request asking how many Syrian and Iraqi refugees have arrived in Canada since January, how many are privately sponsored, and how many came with government assistance.

Today I received a letter from CIC’s Access to Information and Privacy Division, informing me that the information I sought is excluded from the act because it concerned “published material or material available for purchase by the public.”

The letter continued: “Regulation 314 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations (attached) allows for the production of customized reports for immigration statistical data that have not been published by the Department.”

That’s right: I could buy my answer. The attached regulation informed me that the cost of processing my application for data would be $100 for the first 10 minutes or less of access to the department’s database, plus $30 for each additional minute or less of access.

Or maybe Chris Alexander could publicize that information, because he made a promise, and Canadians have a right to know what progress he’s made toward keeping it.

Given the Minister’s performance on Power and Politics Wednesday, he would be well advised to follow Petrou’s advice.

Source: How has Canada fared on resettling Syrian refugees? – Macleans.ca

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , ,

ATIP: “Effectively they are censoring that part of the past:” Michel Drapeau

2015/05/13 1 Comment

Not acceptable. A Government that has strongly supported the Monument for Victims of Communism, where secrecy was the norm and rewriting the past common practice, is essentially behaving in a similar fashion.

Does their paranoia know no ends?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is setting a dangerous precedent by retroactively exempting all long gun registry data from Canada’s access to information and privacy acts, say some of the country’s foremost experts on access to information.

Michel Drapeau, who quite literally wrote the book on Canada’s access law, said the provision buried in the government’s budget implementation bill is “undemocratic,” “high handed” and marks the first time to his knowledge that a Canadian government has tried to make an exemption to the access laws retroactive.

“I think it’s wrong, it’s very, very wrong,” Drapeau said. “There is a concept in law that laws, normally, that’s 99.999 per cent, never have any retroactive action. The past is the past.”

The precedent the government is setting by making the exemption to the access to information act retroactive could be used to eliminate all trace of other files, Drapeau said.

“There’s no limit – anything they want. I guess they could pass a law on whatever activities that this particular government might have done or may have been involved in. It could be the Libyan mission or the ISIL mission.”

“This information doesn’t belong to this government – it belongs to us people.”

The problem, Drapeau points out, is the purpose of the access to information law is to allow citizens and researchers to search past government documents.

“We shouldn’t go out and purge records because we changed our mind or we don’t believe in what it is. I find that wrong and I find it is like robbing part of our collective and national memory and to what purpose.”

“It’s definitely a bad precedent and an example of excessive government secrecy and it’s a very dangerous step backwards.”

“Effectively what they’ve done is they are censoring that part of the past,” he added.

ATIP: “Effectively they are censoring that part of the past:” Michel Drapeau

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

Let there be light, and access to information, in Ottawa – Globe Editorial

2015/04/07 Leave a comment

Cannot agree more, even if in my former life, reviewing ATIP requests was a chore:

When in doubt, disclose – that is one of the admirable messages delivered last week by Suzanne Legault, the Information Commissioner of Canada, in her report on how to modernize the federal government’s access-to-information system.

In fact, the principle in question is even broader. The presumption should be that any document made for a public, governmental purpose should be made public in the first place; that is, it should be posted on the Internet when it is created, and made available to a citizen seeking the information – unless there is some valid, solid reason not to do so. In other words, most public documents should be open “by default.” The burden of proof should be on the concealer.

The privacy of citizens will often be such a reason; secrecy in governmental activity is less often a solid ground.

The current ATI law is 30 years old, and has been amended in only minor ways since then. Governments and bureaucracies have little incentive to provide most information. This history demonstrates that both Liberals and Conservatives are to blame; we may well doubt that the NDP will be any better if they ever come to power in Ottawa.

All this should be, and could be, much easier in an age of electronic documents, when transmitting information is convenient and easy, and when metal filing cabinets are mostly obsolete. But that has not happened.

One recommendation in Ms. Legault would simplify life for everybody. The charging of fees for requests should end – New Brunswick has already done this in 2011.

The most fraught access-to-information question is cabinet confidences – that is, what is genuinely part of the deliberations of the cabinet, and what is being used as “a cloak” to conceal information. Ms. Legault is right that “purely factual and background information” should not treated as cabinet confidences, but “analyses of problems and policy options” may be another matter.

The fact, however, that cabinet confidence was invoked 3,136 times in 2013-2014 gives us pause. Ms. Legault’s recommendation that a few members of her office should be able to assess whether cabinet confidence is being used for its proper purpose is a good one – as is characteristic of this excellent report as a whole.

via Let there be light, and access to information, in Ottawa – The Globe and Mail.

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

Tony Clement concern about electronic information access queried – Politics – CBC News

2015/03/09 Leave a comment

Further to earlier news reports, further confirmation of a Minister not having thought things through, not to mention mixed messaging on the Open Data initiative:

Treasury Board President Tony Clement’s dire warning about why the government can’t release certain electronic data under access to information requests seems to have left his senior staff mystified, newly disclosed documents show.

In an interview late last year, Clement said that some database requests under the Access to Information Act can’t be released in their original electronic format because the numbers could be manipulated and “create havoc.”

At the time, Clement was responding to complaints that requests for electronic data often produced records in paper form that couldn’t  be scrutinized by a computer for patterns.

“That’s the balancing act that we have to have, that certain files, you don’t want the ability to create havoc by making it changeable online,” he told The Canadian Press in an interview.

But emails from Clement’s senior staff show the statement left them puzzled about why their minister would make the claim.

“It’s a headscratcher for me. Any idea what the minister is referring to?” wrote one staffer after checking the morning headlines on Dec. 23.

“It’s a speculative thing, no actual occurrence to date … I can’t think of what has not been released due to this perspective,” wrote another — Patrick McDermott, senior manager for open government systems at the Treasury Board secretariat. “What prompts this comment now is a mystery to me.”

For several years, Clement has been touting the Harper government’s proactive online posting of federal databases for free downloading, partly to encourage businesses to mine the data for profit. Canadian corporations trail their counterparts around the world in capitalizing on so-called “big data.”

‘I’m a bit surprised that the [minister] would raise this’

– email from Treasury Board official

The Open Data Portal now offers more than 240,000 free datasets, the vast majority from Natural Resources Canada, apparently without any concern that someone might use them to spread “falsehoods.”

At the same time as pushing this data, though, federal departments have come under fire for failing to deliver individual, non-published datasets requested under the Access to Information Act in their original format, often recreating them in censored paper versions.

Requesters asking for datasets under the Access to Information Act are sometimes given paper versions instead, making it impossible to use computers to sort data.

Departments have offered different explanations for delivering in paper format, but Clement’s comment was the first time a government official claimed the paper copies were designed to foil any statistical mischief.

“I’m a bit surprised that the [minister] would raise this — everyone in the OG (Open Government) community … is aware of the risk that data/info may be misused/applied/quoted etc. .. but that’s just the nature of the beast,” McDermott wrote.

“The trick is to rebut the ‘falsification,’ not speculatively prevent it from happening in the first place.”

In substance, completely silly and just making it hard for those of us who need and use government data on a regular or occasional basis.

Tony Clement concern about electronic information access queried – Politics – CBC News.

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

Alberta plans document dump of freedom of information requests

2015/02/21 Leave a comment

The reaction is almost comical. Too much information, No opportunities for scoops. Do the critics really prefer the federal approach of not releasing, or delaying to the max, information?

But the first two concerns raised by officials strike me as valid:

Sources said the freedom of information co-ordinators were blindsided by the Prentice directive and immediately identified several problems the new policy could create, including:

The potential for privacy breaches.

An increased legal risk for the government if it discloses copyrighted material, or confidential business information.

Backlash from the media, as the new policy would effectively eliminate scoops and undermine long-term investigations.

The inability of the government to justify charging fees for documents that would soon be publicly posted.

Some freedom of information co-ordinators also privately questioned the propriety of Prentice personally ordering a change to policy while the privacy commissioner’s office is conducting an investigation into political interference in freedom of information.

Sources said these concerns were largely ignored. Co-ordinators were told they had to implement the new policy as planned, although legal research had yet to be completed.

I had initially been less sympathetic to the media concerns but listening to journalists discuss the impact on P&P helped me understand the possible implications for scoops and longer-term investigations. But all they need is a window of exclusivity (a week or two) as they should have a head start in knowing what they would be looking for in a way that most would not.

It is a more sophisticated way to manage controversies; flooding, rather than withholding, information. But to make this work, all documents released should be indexed and tagged on Google to ensure easily searchable.

Alberta plans document dump of freedom of information requests – Edmonton – CBC News.

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

Information commissioner pleads poverty, Tory MPs say raise fees

2014/12/06 Leave a comment

The debate over Access to Info fees:

But Legault said charging fees is contrary to the governments touted open government policy, which calls for free access to government information, such as the 200,000 data sets it has now posted online.

She also said it often costs the government more to process fees than they are worth, and that any two-tier or three-tier fee system would simply add complications to the system. It would also require public servants to inquire about the motivation of requesters and the use to which they would put the information, both anathema to modern freedom of information principles.

Conservative MP Joan Crockatt asked Legault to be more open-minded about how fees might help solve the budget crunch. “The solution is in plain sight,” she said, referring to higher fees. “You have a garden growing outside your window.… You can look at cuts or grow your pie.”

Money from access to information fees currently goes into general revenues, not to the information commissioners office, and there is no fee charged to file a complaint with Legault’s office. She recently reported to Parliament that she no longer has any room to manoeuvre in her budget, and that a simple computer-server failure could halt operations for lack of funds to replace it.

I do not have a problem with a doubling of fees and indexing them to inflation (i.e., from $5 to $10).

But given that fees go into general revenues, not the Information Commissioner, this would have to be matched with an increase in her budget.

With hopefully more fulsome government compliance …

Information commissioner pleads poverty, Tory MPs say raise fees – Politics – CBC News.

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

What open government hides | Geist

2014/12/03 Leave a comment

Michael Geist on the contradiction between the ‘Open Government’ initiative and the its inaction on ATIP compliance and reform and aversion to serious consultations:

There is much to like about Canada’s open government efforts, which have centred on three pillars: open data, open information, and open dialogue. Given the promise of “greater transparency and accountability, increased citizen engagement, and driving innovation and economic opportunity,” few would criticize the aspirational goals of Canada’s open government efforts. Yet scratch the below the surface of new open data sets and public consultations and it becomes apparent that there is much that open government hides.

The federal efforts around open data have shown significant progress in recent years. What started as a few pilot projects with relatively obscure data has grown dramatically with over 200,000 government data sets now openly available for use without the need for payment or permission. Moreover, the government has addressed concerns with its open government licence, removing some of the initial restrictions that unnecessarily hamstrung early efforts.

However, the enthusiasm for open data has not been matched with reforms to the access to information system. Despite government claims of openness and transparency, all government data is not equal. There is a significant difference between posting mapping data and making available internal information on policy decisions that should be released under access to information rules.

Indeed, while the government has invested in making open data sets available, it has failed to provide the necessary resources to the access to information system. The information commissioner of Canada has warned that inadequate financing has made it virtually impossible to meet demand and respond to complaints. Regular users of the access to information system invariably encounter long delays, aggressive use of exceptions to redact important information, significant costs, and inconsistent implementation of technology to provide more efficient and cost-effective service.

In short, the access to information system is broken. An open government plan that only addresses the information that government wants to make available, rather than all of the information to which the public is entitled, is not an open plan.

What open government hides | hilltimes.com.

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →