Impenetrable

Bureaucrats at Treasury Board have huddled since June 2020, studying the Access to information Act (ATIA). Last week, they dumped the results on Parliament.

Their so-called “review” is written in a deadening bureaucratese larded with indigestible bits lifted from the academy. To wit:

“A more consistent strategic lifecycle management of the Government of Canada’s information and data assets will require looking at how centralized frameworks and governance, improved storage and organization, retention requirements and metadata tagging tools could yield broad improvements across government in service delivery and program efficiencies.” Huh?

That’s the bureaucrats talking to each other. They’re not even trying to connect with ordinary citizens – especially not those ATIA users they claimed they wanted to “engage.” They’ve broken off the engagement.

The review also dodges any hint of concrete reform, calling for yet more study. Apart from a cure for cancer, the Access to Information Act has to be Canada’s most researched subject of the last four decades.

A sub-study nested within the Treasury Board review like a Matryoshka doll is a perfect illustration of the user-averse mindset.

In 2019, the Act was amended to require institutions to proactively publish a few document types on a regular basis, such as briefing-note titles. The Treasury Board sub-study, carried out between January and August 2021 with the help of Goss Gilroy Inc., examined how that’s worked out.

Researchers found that no one is policing the requirement. Some departments monitor themselves, some do not. Practices are “inconsistent,” “ad hoc” and “uneven.” And the information commissioner has no authority to be a watchdog for proactive publication. The result? “… there is no way to know the extent to which institutions across government are proactively publishing as required.”

An equally important question is whether anyone is using these proactively published materials, which suck up a lot of time and money.

Again, the answer is a shrug. No one is checking whether media, academics, parliamentarians or the general public are actually reading the stuff. “There is no tracking of users of proactive publications, given that institutions are not monitoring sites or users in any fashion,” says the sub-study.

There had been a plan to interview users, such as members of the media, but it was abandoned because of the Sept. 20, 2021, federal election. Apparently, no one revived the idea in the last 15 months.

The report ends with this stunning insight: “It is recommended that IPPD [Information and Privacy Policy Division] engage users in order to gain insight into the relevance of proactive publications to users, as well as gain insight into user needs today, and in the future.” Well, duh? So another study recommending more study?

The worst fears of users have come true. Treasury Board spent 2.5 years on a review of the Access to Information Act that turns out to be a classic inside job. No reforms, and the voices of users gagged, ignored, erased.

Dec. 18, 2022