Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 16th, 2010

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I call the meeting to order.

I want to welcome everyone here.

This meeting, colleagues, is called pursuant to the Standing Orders. As a little background, back in April of last year this committee decided to do a study on open government or proactive disclosure, whichever term you use. There were certain hearings held. Actually, the Information Commissioner appeared before the committee back in April.

It did not continue, because of the summer adjournment. There have been some changes made on the committee, and the committee decided to continue with the study.

Many developments have occurred in Europe, Australia, and recently in the United States. To recalibrate the information we received six months ago, the committee decided to call again before it the Information Commissioner of Canada.

We're very pleased to have with us today Suzanne Legault, the Information Commissioner. She is going to give us a summary or backgrounder on some of the basic principles of open government. It's something she and the members of her office have spent a lot of time and energy and effort on.

We're very much looking forward to hearing from you, Ms. Legault. The floor is yours.

[Suzanne Legault, Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for providing me with an opportunity to discuss once again the subject of open government.

As early as 2008 the OECD became interested in the notions of open government. It developed a recommendation inviting member countries, including Canada, to take the necessary steps to enhance access and promote more effective use of public sector information.

Since then, governments engaged in open government initiatives have recognized the social and economic benefits of sharing information with the public in accessible and open formats. These governments, at various levels, understand that collaborating with citizens helps their citizens to make informed decisions promotes their engagement, instills trust in government, and stimulates innovation and economic activity. These are all fundamental to the development of our democratic institutions.

I am delighted to report that since I appeared before the committee last spring, much has happened around the world as well as in Canada.

For instance, the United Kingdom's Prime Minister, David Cameron, affirmed his government's commitment to opening up data. He set a timetable for the publication of a list of datasets and made due on the early deliverables. The Australian government responded to the Government 2.0 Task Force Report, tabled amendments to the Freedom of Information Act, established the Office of the Information Commissioner of Australia and committed to a culture of public sector openness, transparency and engagement by way of a Declaration of Open Government.

Here at home, at the federal level, some institutions have been involved in projects to make their datasets available to the public. In May 2010, the government launched an online public consultation aimed at creating a digital economy strategy for Canada. Any members of the public were invited to take part in an ideas' forum where they could submit, share and rate ideas. Two out of the three most popular ideas were directly related to open government: participants voted in favour of creating a data portal for Canada's public sector information and supported having greater access to publicly funded research data.

As well, the chief information officer of Canada presented during the summer a five-point plan on open data that includes a prototype for a government portal from which raw data can be searched and extracted for re-use. At the outset, a handful of institutions would include existing data sets within the government's data portal, with the objective of encouraging more departments to participate.

There has also been a policy proposal by opposition members on open government that proposes a number of initiatives, including an open data portal and a single window for accessing information requests and disclosure packages.

At the national level, l along with my federal, provincial, and territorial access-to-information and privacy counterparts issued in September a joint resolution on open government to call for greater openness and transparency from our respective levels of government.

I am pleased that all these projects and initiatives are helping to bring open government to the forefront of public policy development in Canada and hopefully will lead to significant changes.

Mr. Chairman, the last time I appeared before this committee on this subject, I articulated five principles for a “made in Canada” open government strategy for your consideration and that of the committee. These principles were the result of a review and discussions with jurisdictions that are leading the open government movement.

I still stand by these five principles, which are found in the documents that you have before you. In addition, I would like to offer the committee possible short, medium and long-term suggestions for achieving greater openness.

In terms of possible short-term improvements, there is a lot of information currently created by federal institutions that could be proactively posted on their websites. Institutions like National Defence, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, the Treasury Board Secretariat and my office are posting online a list of summaries of access to information requests.

In my opinion, the public in general would benefit from having this information available from all federal institutions. This is a recommendation that I made to the President of the Treasury Board in the course of my office's investigation into the Coordination of Access to Information Requests System — also known as CAIRS.

Each federal institution could also identify, in consultation with their stakeholders, datasets or types of information that are of interest and could be quickly made available to the public.

Mr. Chair, I also believe and strongly believe that reform of the Access to Information Act must be a medium-term goal. In my view it is important to study possible changes to the act in the context of open government and the digital environment that the act operates in and in light of recent changes made in other jurisdictions. For instance, such issues as mandatory timelines, education and research mandates, publication schemes, and order-making power warrant further consideration.

On a longer-term timetable, an open government policy cannot in my view fully succeed without a fundamental cultural change within public sector institutions. The three countries we have studied, the U.S., the UK, and Australia, present different models for achieving this cultural change. The three offer, in my view, valuable insights on how to transform fundamentally the way public sector institutions use and disseminate their information and engage their citizens in a participatory democracy. These open government strategies engage citizens in a collaborative dialogue that leads to enhanced accountability, generates trust, and leads to innovation.

The strength of the open government movement is the participation of a diversity of voices. It is not limited to a small group of insiders.

As Professor Nigel Shadbolt, a member of the UK Transparency Board noted, “it is important that the release of data is driven by what people want, by the formats and frequency in which they want it and by how they wish to use it.”

I have provided you with a list of potential witnesses that could present the committee with additional suggestions on what can be done to achieve the goals of open government.

As always, Mr. Chairman, I'm here to assist the committee in its important study and I'm here to answer any questions that members may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Madame Legault.

We'll now go to the first round.

Ms. Bennett, you have seven minutes.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thank you very much. It's great to be here and to have you with us to help us in what I think needs to be transformative. This is what I'm hearing.

In terms of your recommendations short-term, medium-term, and long-term, it sounds as though in the short term, with a little bit of leadership, every department could be asked to put online immediately what a couple of departments have already done. In other countries this is done because the president says “Thou shalt”.

Can you tell me whether, in terms of the change of culture, that kind of leadership is coming from Treasury Board, or is it only coming from your office?

[Suzanne Legault]

The difference we're seeing when we look at the other jurisdictions, the U.S., the UK, and Australia, is that what has been significant in the open government movement is that there have been declarationsfrom the prime ministers—or the President, in the case of the United States—declaring the leadership intention to promote open government. It has translated differently in different jurisdictions in terms of how it's implemented, but that's one of the key criteria and one of the five principles that I mentioned.

As to Canada, what I see now is that the Office of the Chief Information Officer at the secretariat is very much engaged in this process now. They're really developing a strategy and they're planning to develop a policy. But we haven't had in Canada a declaration by the Prime Minister to that effect, as far as I know.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

So when you are citing best practices like some of the things at National Defence, ACOA, and the Treasury Board Secretariat, you're saying to me that the Prime Minister hasn't said anything like Obama did: that other departments need to get with the program immediately within three months, six months, or twelve months, and that “thou shalt” or you will no longer be a deputy minister.

I mean, don't you actually need to have a culture of openness if you're going to move from proactive disclosure, which is a “if you make me” kind of attitude, to an open government, which is “here it all is and go and use it properly”, to help a digital economy or all of the things that we know from census data? So you're saying that you've not really heard that from the Prime Minister.

[Suzanne Legault]

I haven't seen a declaration on open government by the Prime Minister. What I do see in Canada is that there are various areas of active action at this point. That's what I'm seeing. On the digital economy, as I said, the public consultation is very open and is very much like an open government initiative. They consulted their stakeholders. Two of the most popular recommendations deal with open government. The CIO is now developing a strategy to develop an open data portal for the government, and we'll see where that leads. I think that's one of the witnesses you might want to hear from, because they're the ones that are responsible for this.

But do we have an across government, all-encompassing open government strategy in Canada? At this stage, I don't think we do, certainly not compared to what we have seen in the other three jurisdictions we've studied.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

So as the commissioner you're saying to us that no matter what the CIO designs as an excellent portal, unless the individual departments are told by the leadership, by the Prime Minister, by Treasury Board, to populate that portal with their data, it doesn't happen.

[Suzanne Legault]

I think you might want to ask this question to the chief information officer in terms of what kinds of directives they will give to the other departments. That's outside of my sphere of influence, if you wish. But I do believe that, as the Australian task force recommended, there has to be an open government declaration from the leadership of the country in order to effect a long-term and profound cultural shift in the way we govern.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Does that attitude change and that cultural change include incentives as well as consequences for not doing it?

[Suzanne Legault]

Well, what we're seeing, particularly in the States in the way the Obama administration has implemented its open government strategy, is that they have strict timelines that people have to abide by. They have to produce results. They've just conducted an audit in terms of how the various departments are doing. There are implementation stages with specific timeframes and there are people who are accountable for what they're doing.

In the U.K., there is now a new transparency board. That was implemented this summer. I'm not quite sure how it's going to work, but that is the body that's going to be responsible for this.

In Australia, it's the Minister for Finance and Deregulation who is really responsible for the implementation of the open government strategy there, along with the information commissioner. The information commissioner in Australia is very much part of the open government strategy and has an expanded mandate in order to participate in that.

So yes, strict timelines, strict accountabilities, and measurement of results are definitely part of what we're seeing in the other jurisdictions.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

In our proposal for open government that you alluded to in your remarks, we were suggesting opendata.gc.ca, a searchable website for all of the government data.

We were suggesting that the access to information requests be up and online, which would eliminate duplication. You could see that there's one already up there, that the one that's already up there has already been answered, and you could find that data.

Then we were suggesting a separate one, accountablespending.gc.ca, where you could find all the grants, contributions, or contracts available, also in a searchable online database.

How far away are we from having at least those three tools?

[Suzanne Legault]

In terms of the disclosure logs for access to information requests, I've been having discussions with the Treasury Board Secretariat. As I said, they've now taken the leadership. It was part of the CAIRS investigation that we did have these discussions with the secretariat, and they've now taken the leadership role in posting their own, and I know they're working with the departments to see if they can spread that practice across the federal government. I know they have concerns about private information, confidential information, and also official languages requirements, which is also a cost burden. In order to do this in Canada, we have to consider that as well.

In that respect, how far are we? I think we're getting there, because now institutions are moving in that direction voluntarily. We now have four institutions that are doing it, and I think that's going to spread. I think the secretariat is looking to continue in that initiative.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

That's four out of how many?

[Suzanne Legault]

Two hundred and fifty that are subject to the Access to Information Act.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Two hundred and fifty? Four out of 250.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

We're going to Madame Thi Lac.

You have seven minutes.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Good afternoon, Mrs. Legault. Thank you for coming here today. We had the pleasure of meeting with you last April, but several things have changed since then. It is always nice to welcome you here.

Access to information is essential for citizens. As we know, a growing number of Canadian and Quebec citizens are deciding not to vote during elections and they are disengaging from politics. Do you in fact believe that transparency measures will increase citizens' interest in topical issues and government matters?

[Suzanne Legault]

That is a good question. I have not done any demographic analyses to determine exactly why a particular group decides whether or not to participate in an election. This may be a question you should ask the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada.

I once read an article that I found to be of particular interest. It was about the digital generation, namely, young people under the age of 25. The article concluded that the problem facing government institutions was probably that they were unable to reach these people through the right medium. The people in this demographic group do not read newspapers, they interact online. The open government initiatives focus a great deal on the digital release of government information. This will enable them to capture a segment of the population that is probably different. When you talk to people from Google or OpenText, they will tell you the same thing. We truly are in the digital era. We are no longer talking about generation X, Y or W, but rather the digital generation. I think that we need to use digital means in order to reach out to these people.

I found an interesting report, namely the one submitted to the Clerk of the Privy Council by Messrs. Tellier and Emerson. The report states that the federal public service must start using social media not only for working within government institutions but also for interacting with the citizens. It needs to learn how to work with the citizenry by using its suggestions in developing policies and programs. In Australia, this is an integral part of open government policy. Renewal of the public service and the way it interacts with its citizens is one aspect of this.

Will this result in greater voter turnout? Perhaps.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

As you said, in the United States, the Obama administration has talked about transparency. We also know that the current Conservative government, when it was elected for the first time in 2006, talked about transparency. At present, does progress in achieving open government not depend on the political will that Canada wants to attain?

[Suzanne Legault]

In my opinion, the issue of open government and government transparency is not partisan. I am not here to make partisan statements either. I am here because I sincerely believe that the governance of Canada must adapt to new technologies and to the new way of interacting with citizens who are trying, using new technologies, to obtain information in a way that is much more specific and immediate than in the past. Indeed, I think that we must head in this direction.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

I understand, Ms. Legault, but you did mention that the Obama administration had made tremendous strides in this area. This has happened because the administration gave itself transparency instruments. That was what I was trying to get at with my question.

By setting up stringent parameters for protecting types of information, are we not creating a process that enables the government to not disclose certain data that is germane to this desire for transparency?

[Suzanne Legault]

The whole issue of transparency must always take into account the need to protect certain types of information. It is in the public interest to protect certain types of information, such as information on national security and personal information. Even though we may wish to pursue governance and government transparency, we must nevertheless continue setting certain parameters in order to protect sensitive information because it is in the public interest to do so.

[Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Could you describe a mechanism that would enable us to strike a balance in order to protect this information without necessarily interfering with this desire for transparency?

[Suzanne Legault]

Among other things, the information and privacy commissioners recommended, in the resolution, that at the outset, when developing government information for programs, policies or certain databases, we conduct an exercise that will allow an exact evaluation of the way in which we will build data banks and allow their disclosure.

At the federal level, with regard to requests for access to information, it is very difficult to promote the disclosure of information in a reusable form of technology, because it often comes from data banks that already exist in institutions that have not been designed in this manner, or also because this data is in static form. In the government, we work a great deal with PDF or HTML formats. These are static documents, they cannot be reused.

This is different from the government transparency that is being developed elsewhere. This is why in the United States, one of the prominent figures is the person in charge of developing technology throughout the entire American public service. This is the person who evaluates which technology will be used for recording data.

This is why we need to think about this beforehand. When we hear that this will involve a cultural change, it is because we have to think of a new way of producing our information in the federal public service.