Evidence of meeting #17 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was requests.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Louis Plamondon Bloc Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC
Therefore, it is done to help prepare for question period.
Director, Access to Information and Privacy, Treasury Board Secretariat
It is to help prepare question period, but it is also so that he can answer questions from the media, in case they call him once the information has been made public.
Bloc
Louis Plamondon Bloc Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC
When you give me that kind of answer, I have the impression that you are the minister's assistant, and that you are not an objective person anymore.
Director, Access to Information and Privacy, Treasury Board Secretariat
I am very objective. Every request is processed in accordance with the law...
Bloc
Louis Plamondon Bloc Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC
But when you inform the government in a manner that helps it deal with the media and House of Commons, you become partisan.
Director, Access to Information and Privacy, Treasury Board Secretariat
All I do is identify requests that are “high visibility”, that may attract attention. That being said, it is the communications directorate that decides whether information should be prepared in advance. But that is not my responsibility.
Bloc
Louis Plamondon Bloc Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC
Can the official from the department please take a seat?
Bloc
Louis Plamondon Bloc Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC
The witness suggested that the official could provide an answer.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
I understand, but
perhaps we could ask in writing for that additional information, okay? Because your time is now up.
Director, Access to Information and Privacy, Treasury Board Secretariat
Okay.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Thank you, Chair.
Ms. Brennan, you mentioned the best practices document that you said was distributed recently. Could you provide a copy of that or could the chair obtain a copy of that? I think it would be very helpful for us to see that.
Director, Access to Information and Privacy, Treasury Board Secretariat
Yes. I'll go through my director of parliamentary affairs for that.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Terrific. Thank you very much.
Ms. McCulloch, in your presentation you mentioned some of the steps that your department was taking to improve compliance with the access to information requests, and one of them was the ATIP professional development program. You mentioned that you're trying to address some issues around recruitment, retention, and succession planning in the department through this program. Can you tell me what the specific problems are that have arisen around recruitment and retention in the department, in your ATIP section?
Director, Access to Information and Privacy, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Well, first of all, the issues we're having are not only with DFAIT. The federal ATIP community is in a critical situation right now due to a lack of experienced ATIP capacity. There are a number of factors for that, including that when the Federal Accountability Act was introduced in December 2006 it widened the coverage of ATIP legislation to some 250 institutions. That really sucked up.... Excuse the expression, but it really ate up the expertise.
There's also a huge wave of what we call the “newbies” coming in. To recruit them, to make ATIP an interesting field, to retain them, and to develop them for their career progression, an ATIP professional development program has been deemed--not only by DFAIT, but by several organizations and several federal departments--to be a very beneficial tool for our field right now, since we have to bring in new blood.
It's a great opportunity to bring in people who have the competencies and the interest in the ATIP field and to develop them into analysts. Yes.
Director, Access to Information and Privacy, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
From a variety of other program areas, from other groups and levels, from people who have entered the federal public service and have just not had an opportunity to work in ATIP and would like to become ATIP analysts. We recruit internally to DFAIT as well as externally.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Are you getting many from specific academic programs that train people to be access to information officers?
Director, Access to Information and Privacy, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
There is the University of Alberta access and privacy program. We have recruited. We have someone with our office right now.
We actually have several individuals who have completed that Alberta certification program. That is definitely one area.
Being at DFAIT, I have to admit that other areas we need to tap into more are the co-op programs and the FSWEP programs, where we can draw in more students in their third or fourth years who are studying international affairs and have a keen interest for DFAIT matters, because doing ATIP at DFAIT can vary quite a bit from doing ATIP at Agriculture or at PCO, depending on what their own career interests are.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
You folks have a lot of experience in access to information in government. In any of your experience, has there ever been an attempt to coordinate a uniform process across departments? We've heard that there are variations between how your departments deal with these issues. Has there ever been, in your experience, an attempt to make that uniform across government? Anyone who has an answer can jump in.
Director, Access to Information and Privacy, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
I'll let my colleagues speak in a minute, but if I may answer, we have been discussing with colleagues in the ATIP community more collective approaches on staffing and recruitment. I personally am taking part in focus groups on developing learning road maps, curriculum with a--
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
But specifically on the ATIP process that we've heard about this morning, has there ever been a discussion about making that more uniform across government?
Director, Access to Information and Privacy, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Well, we certainly share, quite routinely, lessons learned and we discuss.... You know, the Treasury Board policies that are there are extremely useful. Of course, we customize them depending on our own departmental organizations.