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Submissions to the Access to Information Review Task Force
SYNOPSIS OF RECOMMENDATIONS / PROPOSALS / COMMENTS FROM WRITTEN SUBMISSIONS SENT TO THE ACCESS TO INFORMATION REVIEW TASK FORCE
PART II - PROPOSED CHANGES TO ADMINISTRATION AND OPERATIONS
1. ACCESS TO INFORMATION CONTEXT
General
Information about the access process within ministries should be confined to the ministries themselves and the Office of the Commissioner: the Prime Minister's Office should be specifically prohibited from accessing or using information about the pattern of requests unless or until it has been published in the annual reports of the Ministers or Commissioner.
Kirsti Nilsen & Margaret Ann Wilkinson
The entire handling of access requests under the Act should be an open process.
Robert Bothwell & Patricia McMahon
Parliament adopt a strategy designed to integrate openness within the next ten years into the way each and every government agency, including Parliament itself, conducts its business.
National Council of Women of Canada
Parliament and government agencies formally adopt, with in a Code of Ethics, values of openness in pursuing their missions.
National Council of Women of Canada
The principle of "ministerial responsibility" and the responsibility of officials "to disclosure in the public interest" clarified.
National Council of Women of Canada
As in other countries, Canada should modernize its doctrine to distinguish between a minister's area of accountability and that of senior public servants to help ensure that secrecy is not used unjustifiably to protect ministers from accountability.
Open Government Canada
The Canadian Library Association would like to affirm that government information should be more readily available and that use of the Access to Information Act should be the last resort, not the first, for gaining access to government information.
Canadian Library Association
I think Canadians will expect more openness and transparency from the government, and will expect to be able to ask for and receive information electronically, e.g., via the internet, both informally and through the formal access to information request process.
Ken Huband
All information should be public unless specifically restricted. This is the opposite of the current approach used in Federal Government departments and agencies.
Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
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Public Education
The IPC is committed to fulfilling an education function for both the public as well as government, and supports such a role for its federal counterpart.
Ann Cavoukian, Information & Privacy Commissioner, Ontario
The federal government should increase its public education program concerning the access to information system.
Open Government Canada
5. ACCESS PROCESS
Training and Education of Public Servants
There is a need to make access training at all levels of government a mandatory component of any new federal access scheme.
Ann Cavoukian, Information & Privacy Commissioner, Ontario
Instead of seeing the ATIA as an obstacle to their work, public servants should see it as an integral role in fulfilling their mandate as public servants. There needs to be a change in attitude from the top down as well as from the bottom up.
Canadian Library Association
The federal government should establish orientation and training programs to raise the awareness of all public servants of their responsibilities for government information under the ATI Act and related government policies and guidelines, and to increase the skills of public servants in access to information management.
Open Government Canada
Role and Status of ATIP Co-ordinators
There is a need to ensure there are standard classification levels in the government for providing ATIP support.
Canadian Access & Privacy Association
The ATIP organization should be located in a common part of all organizations which ensures visibility.
Canadian Access & Privacy Association
We endorse a suggestion that has been made that the Information Coordinators within government be responsible directly to the Information Commissioner although physically located throughout government, as is the model used for employees of the Justice department.
Kirsti Nilsen & Margaret Ann Wilkinson
There are very few people who make using the Access to Information Act less than a daunting experience.
Robert Bothwell & Patricia McMahon
The federal government should be required to employ a sufficient number of well-trained individuals who can intelligently determine why information cannot be subject to the regular requirements of disclosure.
Robert Bothwell and Patricia McMahon
The variety of management and approval structures used by different departments (some of which were virtually guaranteed to make it impossible to satisfy the deadlines of the Act). Some arrangement for delegated authority is essential for the timely delivery of the ATI service.
Ken Huband
Capacity of ATIP Co-ordinators
There should be an Accredited Training Program for ATIP officers.
Canadian Access & Privacy Association
There will still be instances where the staffing complement should be reviewed.
Canadian Library Association
Facilitating Access
The IPC encourages institutions to regularly identify records which lend themselves to routine disclosure/active dissemination.
Ann Cavoukian, Information & Privacy Commissioner, Ontario
We encourage the Task Force to promote routine disclosure/active dissemination strategies in any new federal access regime and to consider the contributions to this objective that the electronic dissemination of this information can make.
Ann Cavoukian, Information & Privacy Commissioner, Ontario
In general, informal access is the preferred route for the dissemination of government information with the formal process best reserved for information that has a sensitivity that requires a balancing of disclosure and protection interests.
Ken Huband
A concerted effort to ensure and promote routine disclosure of information in each government agency.
National Council of Women of Canada
Once released, we support the practice of making the results of all prior access requests known to all and available to all.
Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
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.
Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
The government should consider mandatory or routine contractual provisions indicating that contracts will be open to public access. This will prevent later delays in access.
Ad IDEM - Advocates In Defence of Expression in the Media
The book setting out federal government data banks should be available online, and forms should also be available only to facilitate access requests.
Ad IDEM - Advocates In Defence of Expression in the Media
The practice of processing each request as it is made should remain in place.
Canadian Library Association
If material which should have been public has been provided through one request, it should be made available so that repetitive requests become unnecessary.
Canadian Library Association
If information is not excluded under the provisions of the ATIA, it should be made readily available with no limit on how much material may be requested.
Canadian Library Association
The increasing use of the Act as well as its attribution by the media as a source of information for news stories has contributed greatly to the public's belief that the legislation has value for them.
Ken Huband
I believe that the expectation of, and appreciation for, having a right of access to government information is now well established and supported among users of the Act, the media, and among Canadians generally.
Ken Huband
There is usually a story behind a request and knowing the story makes the search and review for relevant information much simpler and more focused. It can often lead to the request being treated informally simply by providing an answer to the question the person wanted to ask. I think the client service model is a good one to use. I contrast this model with the adversarial one which I found present in some institutions. The latter model introduces unnecessary burdens and delays on requesters in order to satisfy internal bureaucratic procedures, creates barriers to communications, and can negatively influence decisions concerning the release of information.
Ken Huband
Too much time and effort is often spent looking for, reviewing and photocopying records containing information of no interest to the requester.
Ken Huband
The federal government should provide adequate funding and staff, including increasing the resources of the office of the Information Commissioner and offices of access to information co-ordinators, to ensure that all information management measures and tasks are carried out to the highest standards of conduct.
Open Government Canada
[The CJFE] asks that efforts be made to improve the access to information process in order to reduce delays and promote greater transparency, including through the use of the new technology (e.g., Internet).
CJFE - Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
Leadership
There is an overwhelming need for government champions of freedom of information laws. Senior leadership at the federal level is urgently needed in this field.
Ann Cavoukian, Information & Privacy Commissioner, Ontario
I don't know whether a general commitment to openness now exists among senior officials and Ministers. If it does not, ATI will remain problematic for both users and administrators.
Ken Huband
Policy Leadership and Central Co-ordination
All ATIP officers should belong to a central agency similar to lawyers reporting to the Department of Justice [it] provide a perception of impartiality for the ATIP officers and allow more flexible staffing to meet varying levels of request. Provides a source of consistency in the processing of requests.
Canadian Access & Privacy Association
Training for all staff and support by central agencies are other vital parts of the puzzle. I have marvelled at how variable the processing and decision-making is from one department to another.
Ken Huband
Greater centralization of the access to information function … 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.
Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
Centralized monitoring … requests being monitored as they are in process, rather than the current counting after the fact in a departmental reporting format.
Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
Information Management
Enhancements and improvements to equipment and software need to be accompanied with a commitment to ensuring ongoing access by archiving information produced by the Canadian Government. The preservation of all editions of all documents and ensuring their "migration" along with the development of new equipment and software is necessary to ensure that the documents will be still accessible in the future with whatever new technologies are developed, thus preserving our heritage.
Canadian Library Association
... Careful attention be given to the creation, indexing, maintenance, preservation and disposal of government records.
...Effective procedures be developed to address information management and access matters involving electronic communication.
Canadian Historical Association
The CHA has long been on record in support of improvements in the area of information management and the proper handling of records. In his letter to the Information Commissioner of 25 September, 1999, past President Irving Abella noted the CHA's vital interest in the orderly creation, indexing, management, preservation, and disposal of government records. In a subsequent letter to the Information Commissioner on 7 November, 2000, Dr. Colin Howell expressed the CHA's concerns about the poor state of information management practices in the federal government and deplored the inefficiencies and poor service that plague the access to information system.
Canadian Historical Association
Ineffective records management procedures lead to considerable inefficiencies and to time-wasted in searching for requested materials. In addition, we have real concerns that valuable items have been disposed of because those making decisions are unaware of the historical significance of the material concerned.
Canadian Historical Association
...The changes that have accompanied the electronic revolution, make it necessary that effective procedures relating to management of and access to electronic communication be established. E-mails, file attachments, and other electronic communications are easily deleted, and hence lost to public access and scrutiny.
Canadian Historical Association
Standard information management methods should be used in all federal government agencies and departments.
Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
Separation statistics used to be available, aggregated on a bargaining unit basis for Treasury Board Secretariat 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.
Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
OTHER
We would recommend that particular, sustained, research effort be supported to provide comparable measures of the benefits of the access regime in Canada.
Kirsti Nilsen & Margaret Ann Wilkinson
Concerning studies purporting to calculate the "costs" of processing ATI requests, the main problem was the lack of consistency in methodology and calculation among the different institutions. Institutions with sloppy record keeping practices or an arcane approval process often reported higher costs. The true cost of processing access requests should not be inflated by inefficient and ineffective systems and procedures. What was needed was to define a standard set of best practices for search, review, approval and preparation and to use them to evaluate costs across different institutions. Best practices would exclude such things as the time spent by senior management obsessing about the fallout from a sensitive disclosure!
Ken Huband
PART III - PROPOSED CHANGES TO CURRENT CONSULTATION
PROCESS
Current Consultation Process
... The CHA supports a comprehensive review of the 1982 Access to Information Act.
Canadian Historical Association
...The Association of Canadian Archivists supports the Government of Canada in its review of the Access to Information Act ... [and] ... urges the Task Force to use the expertise of archivists in its deliberations through direct contact with appointees of the Association's President.
Association of Canadian Archivists
Only an independent and open Public Interest review can provide legitimacy and credibility and genuinely hope to improve the public's right to know. Before any administrative or legislative changes are made, the ATIRTF's final report needs to be followed by an independent, fully informed public review.
National Council of Women of Canada
The Task Force's workplan, including research topics, identity of researchers, and results of research, should be made available to the public and published on the Task Force's website as soon as possible, and definitely well before the Task Force completes its report.
Open Government Canada
Documents that have been produced since 1993 that in any way concern the views of federal government departments, ATI officers and co-ordinators should be made available to the public and published on the Task Force website as soon as possible, and definitely well before the Task Force completes its report.
Open Government Canada
The Task Force should put a contract to public tender to conduct a review of the benefits, in terms of money saved and likely potential harms and wrong doings prevented, resulting from the requirements of the ATI Act and the access to information system.
Open Government Canada
Given the significant flaws in the Task Force Review process, the federal government should provide all information gathered by the Task Force as well as sufficient funding to a more independent entity (such as the Law Reform Commission of Canada; a Joint Senate-House of Commons Committee; the Information Commissioner; a public inquiry) to conduct a full and more independent review of the federal ATI Act before amendments to the law are introduced by the government. Such a review should include public hearings across Canada, and follow the new draft "Policy Statement and Guidelines on Consulting and Engaging Canadians."
Open Government Canada
There should be regular reviews of the Act. Consultation should bring different groups together to facilitate resolution of common concerns. Separate consultations can lead to difficulties in reconciling some positions which may appear to be in conflict, when they are not.
Ad IDEM - Advocates In Defence of Expression in the Media
[The CJFE] calls for the complete disclosure of the Task Force's workplan and research activities as well as the reports of its meetings; and asks that efforts be made by the Task Force, in the months remaining before it is to present its final report, to ensure that the review, in order to be effective, be balanced and transparent so that it satisfies stakeholders both within and outside of government.
CJFE - Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
