Evidence of meeting #49 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 things.
A recording is available from Parliament.
As an Individual
The introduction of the Freedom of Information Act is one of the things that has contributed to a culture change among people working in government, and the introduction of social media tools, particularly things like Twitter and Facebook, has meant that increasing numbers of civil servants, particularly in the middle ranks, have made themselves available in the public domain and talked about their work. This, for some people, has exposed them to a degree of scrutiny, in some cases in the national media, that they wouldn't normally expect to have in their everyday lives. It's also meant that for people outside government they have completely different channels to be able to engage with government. So if somebody wants to engage with a particular official who they know is responsible for a particular thing, they can send them a message on Twitter and they can get a response on Twitter, which is I think a mark of how a culture of openness is becoming much more systemic than perhaps it was even five years ago. The use of social media tools is certainly underpinning that very much at the middle level of officials who are beginning to adopt and use these tools.
It was a big step forward for the government to establish, probably about 18 months ago, a clear set of policy guidelines about civil servants' participation in social media, what it's possible for people to do, where the lines are in relation to their civil service code. That certainly enabled an increasing number of civil servants to talk about their work more openly, using those channels as part of a wider cultural change that is happening. Maybe when the history books are written, people will look back and say it was the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act that really marked the starting point for that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you very much, Ms. Davidson.
We're now going to go to Ève-Mary Thai Thi Lac from the Bloc Québécois, cinq minutes.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
Good afternoon. I will be asking my questions in French. Thank you both, Mr. Worthy and Mr. Sheridan, for making the long journey here to share your experiences with us.
Since my time is limited, I will put three questions to you in succession and then you can each take turns answering them.
I was delighted to hear that it is possible to have an open government, even with a coalition government. We mustn't forget that we currently have a minority government in Canada. The government often maintains that progress is impossible because opposition parties hold the majority of seats.
You have a coalition government. We came close to having one too at one point. It would appear that in spite of having a coalition government, you have managed to make the shift to open government. So then, I'm delighted to hear you say that.
What would you qualify as your biggest success, and conversely, your biggest shortcoming, as far as having an open government is concerned? In your opinion, how has open government proved most beneficial to Australia and the United States? What mechanisms has the United Kingdom yet to put in place? You say that Australia and the United States have adopted the best approach. What haven't you been able to put in place?
I would also like to hear your views on social media. You talked about the important role that social media play in the lives of public officials. Do these public officials blog and post comments on social media discussion sites? Do they do so anonymously? I want to be sure that, in the spirit of open government, when you say public officials interact using social media, they interact openly, using real websites. Thank you.
Research Associate, Constitution Unit, University College London
That's an extraordinarily difficult question to answer. I think if you asked people who worked in government, the greatest success for the Freedom of Information Act would be in promoting this more open culture John just spoke about and I spoke about earlier. Even departments that were historically rather closed, such as the Ministry of Defence, are now operating in a more open manner.
I think if you asked journalists or campaigners, they would probably tell you that the greatest success of the Freedom of Information Act—and it was only partly the Freedom of Information Act—was such things as the revelations about MPs' expenses in the U.K., where the Freedom of Information Act is one of the triggers for finding out what MPs had been spending their expense money on. It's also led to the publication of local senior officials' salaries. These are some of the ways in which it has achieved things.
The shortcomings would depend on your point of view. I think officials would point to people not using it within the spirit of the act. They would cite journalists using it to write negative stories by de-contextualizing the information at the local government level.
Similarly, in Canada, under your ATI, there's heavy use by business to gain commercial advantage, which is seen as a rather negative use and not really what the Freedom of Information Act was created for.
From a requester's point of view, they would probably find delay one of the most frustrating things, the fact that they have to wait so long for information.
Australia, and the U.S. to an even greater degree, have been reinvigorated in recent years by greater freedom of information. Australia under Kevin Rudd, and now it seems under the new Prime Minister, has moved quickly to greater openness. And in the U.S., President Obama's first two executive memoranda concerned open government and open data. I think the two countries have been reinvigorated. They have leaders who supported the principles, and they both took a real leap forward in merging freedom of information with open data, e-government, and all these other issues.
As to the social media, one of the fears with freedom of information is that it would mean that officials were no longer anonymous. But we didn't find that those fears came to pass at all. Officials are open and often quite available in the U.K. They didn't find freedom of information was revealing, particularly in giving out the officials' names or anything.
Picking up on this idea of using Twitter and other social media, one interesting example is that a local authority last week in the U.K. decided to Twitter for 24 hours to explain all the work that it did over the course of a single day. This is a wonderful example of transparency via social media. They were able to try to explain to the people exactly what they did during the course of a day, to help them understand.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Patricia Davidson
Thank you very much.
We will now move to Mr. Abbott, who is a member of the Conservative Party and the government party.
Conservative
Jim Abbott Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Good evening, gentlemen.
To set the table here, a member of the opposition, Ms. Bennett, and I are going to be travelling with two senators to Wales next week, and we're going to be speaking with some of the legislators there.
How does your legislation that covers the national government cover something like the Welsh Parliament? Or is it a legislature? I can't remember which is the designation.
As an Individual
We have two freedom of information acts. We have two ratings. We have a rating for England and Wales, and a separate rating for Scotland, and we have different regulators. We have an information commissioner for England and Wales, and an information commissioner for Scotland. That means that the Welsh Assembly government and the Welsh Assembly fall under the same obligations as the U.K. government and the U.K. Parliament, as regards freedom of information. They have the same regulation—the same information commissioner—which is different from the situation in Scotland.
Conservative
Jim Abbott Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
I'm just repeating to make sure that I'm clear: you have the same regulator between Westminster and Wales but not the same regulator as far as Scotland is concerned.
Research Associate, Constitution Unit, University College London
If I could just add something, one of the interesting things about Wales was it tried to put itself at the top of the pack, as it were, when FOI was passed because it was decided that the cabinet, the Welsh Assembly, would publish its minutes six months after it met. So it did try to do a few things that put it ahead of, for example, the local authorities in Britain and the central government in Britain. But as John points out, it is the same regime.
Conservative
Jim Abbott Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
I'm trying to drive to the issue of bilingualism, which is something we have to work with here in the Parliament of Canada and in our nation, being an officially bilingual country. Are there any practical issues on the Canadian or Welsh freedom of information laws that are impacted with their use of a second language?
Research Associate, Constitution Unit, University College London
Not that I know of. I presume that authorities are obliged to respond in either of the two languages, but I'll perhaps pass that over to John, if he knows.
As an Individual
I know that there are particular obligations around publishing of information. The Welsh Language Act does mean that when information is published by the Welsh Assembly government, there needs to be dual-language versions, and that of course is a significant undertaking. As regards freedom of information, my expectation would be--but this is not my area of expertise--that the obligation is to make available the information in the form in which it was held.
Conservative
Jim Abbott Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
We have a little bit more of a challenge here because of our parliamentary convention or practice or rules. For example, if information comes before this committee, in either of the official languages, but is not translated, then it cannot be used by the committee until it is in the translated form.
There's a bit of a question in my mind, which I've been raising through these hearings, as to which comes first. If information was held by the government in one of the languages, should it be available in both languages before it's released, or is it more urgent—particularly if it was a great volume of information—that it be released in whatever language it happens to be in?
Are either of you aware of this as being an issue in Wales?
Research Associate, Constitution Unit, University College London
I'm not aware of it being an issue in Wales. I've not heard of anything.
I would point to a rather different example. I know one country in which this has been raised as an issue was India over the Right to Information Act, where there was a large-scale study of its impact. Language there was a huge issue, because it seems that lots of officials were using English when perhaps they shouldn't have done. But I know of nothing in Wales.
Conservative
Jim Abbott Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
They have quite a number of languages in India, of course.
Research Associate, Constitution Unit, University College London
Yes, of course.
Conservative
Jim Abbott Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
We are looking forward to being in Wales. Do you have any weather tips for us?
Sorry, gentlemen, I'm just being facetious.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you very much, Mr. Abbott.
We are now going to go back to Mr. Siksay.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, gentlemen.
I think one of you touched at one point on questions of the creation of records and whether freedom of information and proactive disclosure had any effect on government officials or public servants documenting their decision-making process or documenting their decisions. Have there been any issues or concerns about the creation of records or the duty to document? Is there a legislated obligation or anything like that in the U.K. on that side?
Research Associate, Constitution Unit, University College London
I could just say a few words about this.
First, it's terribly difficult to establish the impact of freedom of information or open data on records because so many things flow into what makes a record be a certain way or not. Of course there are so many influences. I know there have been a few rather high-profile cases in Canada about the issue of records destruction. We concluded from central government that there was no negative impact on record and there was a slight positive impact, because what it had done was actually professionalize, for example, e-mails and other communications that were perhaps a little bit sloppy when they shouldn't have been.
At local government level, we have actually found a few rather interesting incidents where freedom of information has led to people's recording things in a different way, probably in a more negative way with less information. But these seem to be rather isolated examples. It's not happening systematically, simply because people don't really have the time to think about FOI when they're making records. Officials across local and central government have said “Look, there is a professional code of conduct about this; I must have a record.”
On a more day-to-day level, when we spoke to officials they felt they had to have a record because they would get in more trouble if they didn't have a record than if they did and the record got them into trouble. Really, a lot of them were more concerned about the consequences of not having a record. They did point to codes of conduct, for example, codes of professional ethics. It is extremely difficult to tell.
It's interesting. There may be two effects, one negative in certain cases, but also a slight positive effect in terms of cleaning up sloppy e-mails and sloppy documents that may say unprofessional things in them, for example.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
On another topic, are there any international agreements or international bodies that have made statements on proactive disclosure or open government that have had an impact, with recommendations or suggested standards, on the conversation in the U.K.? Are there international standards or international agreements that apply to the kind of work that's been done in the U.K. on freedom of information or data publishing?
Research Associate, Constitution Unit, University College London
I can pass it over to John for that one. I think he would probably know more than I about that. I'll say something after him, if that's okay.