Submissions Received by the Task Force

From: The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
Sent: August 10, 2001

PROPOSED REVISIONS TO ACCESS TO INFORMATION LEGISLATION

The following presents in point form the proposals of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada for changes in the Access to Information Act.

Underlying Philosophy

• All information should be public unless specifically restricted. This is the opposite of the current approach used in Federal Government departments and agencies.
• Federal agencies and departments should be encouraged to make as much information as possible directly available to the public on a proactive basis, i.e. without the need to make access requests.

These principles should be reflected in the purpose of the Act (current Section 2).

Exclusions

• Exclusions should be applied consistently: as one example of the Institute's experience, an agency severed the entire contents of two reports on the grounds of Section 21 ,which we summarize as follows:
  • 21(a) -summarized as "advice or recommendations"
  • 21(b) -summarized as "consultations or deliberations"
  • 21 (d) -summarized as "plans relating to the management of personnel or the administration of a government institution that have not yet been put into operation"

    Our complaint to the Information Commissioner was that, while the advice, recommendations, conclusions and future plans may justifiably be severed under Section 21, it would seem unlikely that the Act intended for the basic facts and supporting data in such reports to be excluded from release as well. With the intervention of the Commissioner's staff, the agency agreed to release such other information. In fact the agency agreed to release the full contents of one of the reports. However, some 18 months had elapsed from the date of our original request until the first report's contents were released.

    Consistent application of the exclusions is a key reason for our proposal, outlined below under "Access Process", for greater centralization of the access to information function.

• Names excluded as personal information: PIPSC supports changing the Act so that a person's name, by itself, is not considered to be personal information. As an example of how this has affected one of our requests, we sought information from specific departments on the number of casual nurses employed in a particular time period. We found that record systems varied by department and region, however, where the records were kept by individual name and the names were removed, it was impossible to determine if the information related to one or several nurses in that period.

Scope

• All crown corporations should be covered by the legislation. By way of example, the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB) is now subject to the Act, while the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) is not.
• Organizations created by government which disburse public funds should be subject to the legislation. An example: the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) is not covered. We note that the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), with a comparable role, is now covered.

Information Management

• Information management systems need to be significantly improved. A key reason for delay in responding to access requests is the lack of knowledge of what information exists. Consequently, the time taken to do the searches to find the information slows the response process. We support including a requirement in the Act for managers to maintain an inventory of all information and documents for which they are responsible.
  
  
• Public Service managers should be held accountable for the management of information under their administration in the same way that they are accountable for financial resources. As an option, a system of financial penalties might be established for the failure to respond to an access request within specified time limits, e.g. a sliding scale with rising penalties for failure to provide the requested information after more than 30 days, ... more than 6 months, more than one year. (We have examples of some very long delays.)
  

  We recognize that administering such a system of financial penalties would create new headaches. We advance it as a means of getting the attention of managers on the need to allocate sufficient resources to the access to information function. Some other method of assessing departmental performance in responding to ATI requests may achieve the same objective.
  

• As an incentive to encourage federal agencies and departments to make more information directly accessible by the public, without the need to make access requests, departments and managers might be assessed on the percentage of the information under their control which is available to the public.
  
  
• Standard information management methods should be used in all Federal Government agencies and departments. As an example reflecting Institute needs, human resources information in an aggregated form should be available in a consistent format from all departments and agencies. Many Institute access requests are for such data and we find that information is stored in varying ways even among regions in the same department. A common human resources information system for all employees, including term, casual and part time employees, for whom the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) is the employer, would likely facilitate all reporting on human resource matters. As specific examples of aggregate information which has been requested by PIPSC but cannot now be reported:
  
  
  • separation statistics: these used to be available, aggregated on a bargaining unit basis for TBS groups, from a former record system and reports were published by the Pay Research Bureau. Aggregate data should be available on a classification level basis to identify retention problems;
  • numbers of casual employees aggregated by classification level and occupational group reported by the specific period during which they were employed;
  • educational attainment of current employees: the PIPSC requests have been for aggregate information by classification level on years from bachelor graduation for professional employees. For many of the classes we represent, outside counterparts are paid on a "maturity curve" basis. However, information on this cannot be aggregated from the HRIS systems used in departments and agencies for which the TBS is the employer .

On a broader basis than just meeting our information needs for collective bargaining, an improved system for reporting on HR matters would likely benefit government departments and agencies as employers by facilitating effective human resource utilization, enhancing their capacity to plan for future requirements, and should improve their ability to report to Parliament.

Access Process

• Greater centralization of the access to information function: the Institute supports the idea advanced at the June 6th meeting hosted by the Public Policy Forum fur a greater centralization of responsibility, along the lines of lawyers in the federal public service who, while they are assigned to other departments, continue to be employees of the Justice Department. We believe that would foster common approaches and methodologies, for, example, by ensuring consistent interpretations of the exclusion criteria across all departments and agencies.
  
  
• Centralized monitoring: related to the above point, PIPSC sees merit in access requests being monitored as they are in process, rather than the current counting after the fact in a departmental reporting format. Particularly as a remedy for the delay problem, it would be useful for the Information Commissioner to be aware of requests which have been outstanding for lengthy periods so that questions can be asked about the reasons for such delays. Filing all access requests at a single office would accomplish this, but might contribute to the delay by adding another processing step. However, when a request is submitted to a department or agency, sending a copy to a central office would not cause delay and would provide some internal government oversight for each.
  
  
• Once released, available to all: we support the practice of making the results of all prior access requests known to all and available to all. We are aware of this current practice at DND, where a list of all responses to access requests is available on the Department's website. Copies of any documents provided in response to these are available for photocopying costs only.

Costs

• We believe the initial fee and the hourly fee for search and preparation should be dropped completely. The information was created or compiled at taxpayer expense. For government, keeping the public informed should be considered as part of the "cost of doing business", not as an extra cost. Any cost could be viewed as an impediment to participatory democracy: citizens need basic information in order to understand the issues and, as a consequence, have the ability to make useful contributions to dialogue.
  
  
• If charges for photocopying are retained, they should be in line with commercial rates, which are now considerably lower than $0.20 per page.
  

Submissions Received by the Task Force