Information & Ethics Committee on March 9th, 2011

[John Sheridan]

Could you clarify for me what sorts of things you would envisage?

I can certainly speak to data publishing, where this is an emerging art—for example, the involvement I have with the worldwide web consortium, which is the web standards body. That consortium has just chartered a group to look at government-linked data standards and approaches to try to develop some best practice. The area of open data is very fluid in terms of what's good practice and the level of maturity of the guidance and standards you can latch onto. If you were to compare it, for example, with something like website accessibility, where there have been standards in place for a long period of time, we're just beginning to establish what is best practice and what best practice looks like through standards organizations. And we're very much at the beginning of some of this activity around government link data, literally starting next month. So it's early days from an open data perspective.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Worthy, you had wanted to make a comment on that.

[Ben Worthy]

Yes.

Just to add one more thought, one particular kind of international institution to keep an eye on is the World Bank, which recently set itself some new standards in terms of openness. Now it seems to be very much an enthusiast for open data, for itself and also for the developed and particularly the developing world. They've long been an exponent of freedom of information as an anti-corruption tool but also as what they call a leverage right to help people gain certain socio-economic benefits. They've now increasingly come to look at open data as helping to serve those ends as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Siksay.

Madam Freeman, I understand you want a few minutes. Go ahead.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

One or two minutes isn't much time.

We here in Canada are envious of the population of the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States, because we do not have the same culture of openness. What we have is more of a culture of secrecy.

Summing up, you alluded to this culture of secrecy, Mr. Worthy and said that we should not be afraid of any obstacles that could arise. Could you talk about that a little more?

[Ben Worthy]

Yes....

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

You can speak French.

[Ben Worthy]

The obstacles are numerous, and they can take the form of either political or physical obstacles, as it were. In terms of the political obstacles, persuading people within the bureaucracy who have secretive habits to operate in a more open way is the biggest. This is where the importance of leadership comes in, which is something John explained extremely well. You need someone with a strategic kind of viewpoint on this and also to forcefully say this is what you must do.

Of course, reversing habits is also difficult with regard to getting the mechanisms working again. If there's a great deal of delay, for example, in the system, and people are in the habit of letting freedom of information requests sit in their in-trays, it requires a kind of burst of energy to make the mechanisms work more quickly. It also relates to things like the appeal system and other parts of it, which all need to be made to work quicker.

The answer, of course, is the classic answer to everything in government, which is that it probably needs more resources as well.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

In your country, does each department evaluate managers to ascertain if they manage in an genuinely open manner?

Do you set clear objectives and draw up a firm action plan for achieving open government? Are managers held accountable?

[Ben Worthy]

John, would you like to answer?

[John Sheridan]

From an official's perspective, the thing you are potentially most mindful of is that if a requester isn't satisfied, there is a mechanism—they can go to the information commissioner—and there's a mechanism for resolving that, on a dispute basis. That's a world you don't want to be in.

When someone has made a request, you want to be able to answer the request, fulfill your obligation, and for that to be done. You want it off your desk, for the majority of things. Obviously there are things that are politically much more sensitive, and there could be some very different processes.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

That wasn't my question. I'm not sure who responded, Mr. Worthy or Mr. Sheridan.

I was asking whether departments conduct performance evaluations. Do you use specific criteria to evaluate the work of senior departmental officials? Must they satisfy specific performance objectives? Earlier, you spoke of lengthy delays by certain departments in processing access to information requests.

Are managers held accountable? Are they liable to fines, or some other form of sanction? Does their job description make it clear that this is part of their work and that this responsibility must be taken seriously?

[Ben Worthy]

There are a few ways in which it's measured. The Ministry of Justice publishes statistics, broken down by department, to say how many requests they've had—and what percentage has been answered, what percentage is delayed, and what percentage has not been disclosed. That in itself acts as a kind of lead table for performance, and the media and others comment if a department isn't doing particularly well.

Recently, the new information commissioner in the U.K. has created a new list of bodies that he is watching. When a body performs particularly badly according to different criteria, such as delay, he puts them on the list for six months, and claims to be watching them for signs of improvement, and will keep them on a kind of “naughty list” until they do rectify their behaviour. There are elements of public accountability and also accountability by the regulator.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Worthy.

I want to get just how this policy of open government became institutionalized. I understand it came forward in the Cameron government. Was that part of the coalition agreement between the Conservative Party and Labour Party? Did it appear in the Speech from the Throne, or was it a platform? Can you give us a little bit of background on how it became institutionalized within the policy framework of the Government of Great Britain?

[Ben Worthy]

I'll pass it over to John to correct me, but before the election David Cameron had set himself out to be quite an enthusiast for open data and transparency. So enthusiasm for this issue predated the possibility of a coalition. In fact it was rather interesting that in the dying days of the Labour government, as the election got under way, both then Prime Minister Gordon Brown and David Cameron were marking themselves as enthusiasts for open data.

What's interesting--and one of the reasons why it's so important in the coalition--is that in the area of transparency or openness and how it flows into civil liberties, there is agreement between large parts of the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats. This is part of an agenda they can kind of agree upon. So it was there before, but it has now become one of the linchpins around which the coalition government can be seen to agree and push forward an agenda on it.

I'll now pass over to John to give his perspective on that.

[John Sheridan]

There are specific commitments in the coalition agreement about transparency and data publishing that have given an enormous focus to the activity across departments, and they're basic to the agreement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Worthy.

That concludes the questions from members of the committee. On behalf of all members of the committee, I want to thank you for appearing before the committee. I want to thank you for your insight and your advice.

Before we adjourn, I want to turn the floor back over to both of you if there are any closing comments you want to make to this committee on this issue.

I'll go to you first, Mr. Worthy.

[Ben Worthy]

I want to thank everybody for asking me. It's been very interesting speaking with you. Your questions have been really helpful in making me think about this issue more.

I'd go back to something that has come out of this discussion from both myself and the other witness. It's about how freedom of information and open data are increasingly merging. I think we'll see more interesting things happening around Internet-based applications, where people are doing new things with raw data.

The other thing I'd perhaps emphasize is about proactive disclosure. Sometimes there's a gap between the extent to which government thinks it knows what information people want and the actual information that people want. That can be a significant trip-up point when governments are putting out lots of information and it isn't quite the information people want.

Those are my final two thoughts. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Sheridan.

[John Sheridan]

I would leave you with the observation that what we're seeing here is a transformation driven by the Web, the way in which citizens, officials, and politicians are interacting with each other and using the Web, and a whole new set of possibilities that it is opening up.

What we see around open data, transparency, or freedom of information is part of the zeitgeist that is part of a much deeper shift that we see in society, driven by this extraordinary invention, the World Wide Web, how we're using it, and how it's become an integral part of so many institutions' lives.

From an official's perspective, it's a fantastic and amazing area to be able to work in, particularly the area of open data, as we create this new art of how we disseminate information and data using the Web and all of the wonderful things people will be able to do with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Worthy. Your evidence will certainly be very helpful to this committee as we move forward on this initiative.

Since there's nothing further before the committee, I will adjourn. Our next meeting is on Monday, March 21, at 3:30 p.m. I want to wish everyone a good break week.

The meeting is adjourned.