Freedom of info workshop challenges culture of secrecy
By Christopher Yaw
Stabroek News
December 21, 2006
With the lobby for the implementation of a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act gaining momentum in Guyana, a recent workshop held in Roseau, Dominica to sensitize parliamentarians, public officials and civil society representatives about this human right attracted much interest.
Workshop presenters Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and Eric Olson of the Organisation of American States (OAS) recognized that FOI falls within the attributes of good governance such as transparency, responsibility, accountability, and responsiveness to the needs of the people.
They outlined several international instruments which recognize the right to FOI. And Guyana is a signatory to some of them, including the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Inter-American Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression. Both presenters made reference to the ruling made by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case of Claude Reyes and others vs. Chile in September 2006. In that case the Court found in favour of three environmental activists who in 1998 sought information from the Chilean government about a controversial logging project.
By failing to provide access to the requested information, the Court held that Chile had violated Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of thought and expression.
The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in association with the Parliament of Dominica sponsored the workshop from November 29-December 1. It focused on the principles and legislation of FOI, the culture of secrecy, preparing for implementation, training, monitoring and evaluation, as well as publicizing FOI.
Govt's position
In Guyana, the process has been pushed by the Alliance For Change, which submitted a bill recently to Parliament. Thus far, the Guyana Government has shown no indication whether it is in support of such a bill.
Darce Fardy, President of the Right to Know Coalition of Nova Scotia, addressing the culture of secrecy in the exercise of state power highlighted the fact that such practices breed suspicion and undermine the relationship of trust between the government and citizens.
He referred to cases in Nova Scotia involving issues surrounding developments in which government made decisions without informing the general public. The matters involved a decision to lay a gas pipeline that would have cut through certain neighbourhood properties. Residents only learnt of the decision after it had been made, and then they lobbied using the FOI legislation available in Nova Scotia to force the government to release further information on the project.
They discovered it would have taken up a larger area than was publicized and were able to influence the developer and government to drop the project.
Another case involved accusations by former inmates of a boys' school of molestation. The government did not inform the staff at the school of the accusations since they were trying to keep the matter quiet. However, word got out that these accusations were being made. Using the available legislation the accusers and staff being accused were able to clear the air and bring some relief and closure for the persons victimised.
Political will
With regard to preparing for the implementation of FOI legislation, Carole Excell of the Jamaica Carter Center remarked that in this process there must be political will, a designated information officer, record keeping, training, an oversight committee and a cultural mind shift.
There must be a commitment by public authorities to be open and these agencies should designate information officials to handle inquiries from the public. Additionally these individuals should be trained in order to better assist the public with their requests. The oversight committee, she noted, must be created with a functional enforcement mechanism.
In the area of record keeping it was stated that without accurate, complete and timely records and a means of finding and releasing information to the public, an access to information regime is bound to fail. Excell pointed out the need for standardized procedures and systematic decision-making on automatic publication of information.
An important aspect of legislating FOI also includes getting rural offices involved so that members of the public are not required to travel long distances to the capital cities for information they should be able to get locally.
Independence
It is also critical that any oversight body is independent so as to facilitate enforcement issues. Fardy noted that such committees should be led by persons with unquestionable integrity while it was suggested that the review sessions be conducted informally so as to encourage the public to come forward with requests.
Fardy also expressed the view that the legislation should be in as simple language as possible to allow the average person to take advantage of it while fees for the preparation of information should generally be nominal, and set in the legislation.
Annalisa Sankar of the Legal Services Division, Ministry of Public Administration and Information, Trinidad and Tobago, noted in her presentation that the FOI Act there was assented to in 1999 and became effective in 2001. The bill on FOI, recently tabled in Parliament by Raphael Trotman, leader of the Alliance For Change, has borrowed heavily from this Act.
From 2001-2003, Sankar pointed out, there was an implementation unit setting the groundwork for the Act to be effective. This unit included a head, legal officers, committee officials and an administrative assistant. While the unit existed, they established a database, help desk, a website, produced a CD manual, sample forms, a fact sheet, brochures and posters, sensitized the general public and reviewed the Act with the aim of measuring its effectiveness.
Challenges
Some of the challenges faced by the unit were a high turnover of staff, a lack of enforcement, poor public awareness, poor decision-making and poor records management. Similar problems were reported by members of Jamaican civil society organizations at the workshop and the Antiguan Information Officer who noted that though her office was established when the Act was passed two years ago, she only got an office from which to work a few months ago with phone lines put in even later.
Sankar recognized that there is a need for training and sensitization before implementation of the Act as well as basic infrastructure such as reading rooms for members of the public who would want to peruse documents.
Director of the Access to Information Unit, Jamaica, Joan Archibald, addressing the issue of training, noted that in the 16 months between the tabling and passing of the Access to Information Act (ATI) 500 public officials were trained over a five-month period. Sensitization sessions were also held with members of parliament, civil society, and in various communities. Some of these training sessions were also held informally.
The sessions addressed, among other things, easy retrieval of documents and the fact that whole documents should not be exempt so that public officers and members of the public would recognize their obligations and rights respectively.
The Roseau workshop addressed the establishment of an independent administrative body as an essential element of implementing FOI. It was emphasized that such a body should be allocated statutory functions to ensure the proper implementation of information legislation.
It should have the power to hear appeals from any refusal by a public body to provide information, along with facilities to effectively exercise this role. The administrative body should play a role in ensuring that public bodies properly implement access to information legislation.
Presentations at the workshop on publicizing FOI by Excell, Carolyn Gomes of Jamaicans for Justice and Professor Fay Durant of the University of the West Indies highlighted that public education campaigns to ensure that members of the public are aware of their right to access information, the role of human rights groups, the media (broadcast media in particular), public bodies themselves and civil society generally are necessary. The use of established educational systems, including universities and schools, to promote civic understanding about the right of access to information was also suggested as an additional strategy to publicize FOI.