Apparently there has
been an “Open Government Consultation” conducted by
Treasury Board over the last couple of weeks. Whilst I am not up on
such 'consultations' David Eaves is very much so, I will then hand it
over to him in these
extracts
from a recent post at Eaves.ca. He tells us
that you can explore on
the
Treasury Board website and also that Tracey
Lauriault has tracked some of the submissions
on
her website.
“As part of the Open Government
Partnership commitments it would be great for the government to
commit to guarantee that every request for information made of it
would include a digital version of the document that can be searched.
Second, the government should commit that every
document it publishes be available online. For example, I remember in
2009 being told that if I wanted a copy of the Health Canada report
"Human Health in a Changing Climate:A Canadian Assessment of
Vulnerabilities and Adaptive Capacity" I had to request of CD,
which was then mailed to me which had a PDF copy of the report on it.
Why was the report not simply available for download? Because the
Minister had ordered it not to appear on the website. Instead, I as a
taxpayer and to see more of my tax dollars wasted for someone to
receive my mail, process it, then mail me a custom printed cd.
Enabling ministers to create barriers to access government
information, simply because they do not like the contents, is an
affront to the use of tax payer dollars and our right to access
information.
Finally, Allow Government Scientists to speak
directly to the media about their research.
It has become a reoccurring embarrassment.
Scientists who work for Canada publish an internationally recognized
ground break paper that provides some insight about the environment
or geography of Canada and journalists must talk to government
scientists from other countries in order to get the details. Why?
Because the Canadian government blocks access. Canadians have a right
to hear the perspectives of scientists their tax dollars paid for –
and enjoy the opportunity to get as well informed as the government
on these issues.
Thus, lift the ban that blocks government
scientists from speaking with the media.”
I think by now we all realize that its not just a
particular minister who blocks access to unfavorable reports but that
this practice is in fact now the standard practice for the current
Regime. Whilst I suspect that this 'consultation', as with so many
other initiatives from the Harper Regime is nothing more than smoke
and mirrors to keep folks happy whilst they
go
about doing exactly as they intended in the
first place, David has submitted a number of suggestions and whilst I
urge you to read his entire post here are a few of them which indeed
make a lot of sense.
Redefine Public as Digital: Pass an Online
Information Act
a) Any document it produces should be available
digitally, in a machine readable format. The sham that the government
can produce 3000-10,000 printed pages about Afghan detainees or the
F-35 and claim it is publicly disclosing information must end.
b) Any data collected for legislative reasons
must be made available - in machine readable formats - via a
government open data portal.
c) Any information that is ATIPable must be
made available in a digital format. And that any excess costs of
generating that information can be born by the requester, up until a
certain date (say 2015) at which point the excess costs will be born
by the ministry responsible. There is no reason why, in a digital
world, there should be any cost to extracting information - indeed, I
fear a world where the government can't cheaply locate and copy its
own information for an ATIP request as it would suggest it can't get
that information for its own operations.
Use Open Data to drive efficiency in Government
Services: Require the provinces to share health data –
particularly hospital performance - as part of its next funding
agreement within the Canada Health Act.
Finally before we leave
Dave and examine the other side of the coin he points out how far
behind Canada is in providing open data to its citizens.
Open Budget and Actual Spending Data
For almost a year the UK government has
published all spending data, month by month, for each government
ministry (down to the £500 in some, £25,000 in others).
More over, as an increasing number of local governments are required
to share their spending data it has lead to savings, as government
begin to learn what other ministries and governments are paying for
similar services.
It is interesting to
see that even as they take submissions about improving access to data
they are actively doing exactly the opposite.
The
Sixth Estate points out:-
“......it’s
increasingly difficult to find any Royal Commission reports online
anymore, thanks to the government’s inexplicable practice of
taking down their websites and hiding backup copies on a National
Archives server which blocks Google from indexing its contents.
Presently, the
Harper regime’s Minister of Graft, the Dishon. Tony Clement, is
busy looking for symbolic measures to promote the idea that Canada
has “open government.” Restoring full, indexed, and
easily accessible Commission reports would be a good first step
towards that goal.”
To cap it all off and
to reinforce that the Harperites have no intention of letting their
citizens know what is going on
Poggi
gives us this little snippet of information:-
“The House of Commons gets back to work
next week and that means that parliamentary committees resume as
well. In fact the Standing Committee on Health will meet tomorrow
afternoon.
Kady O'Malley, as @kady on Twitter, was kind
enough to link to this
page which provides the schedule of
upcoming meetings. O'Malley also took note of the number of padlocks
associated with the entries which indicates that a meeting will be
held in camera — closed to the public.
Of the ten meetings currently listed, eight of
them will be held in camera. Admittedly this
isn't something I've kept track of but that seems high. It's worth
noting that aside from preventing the press and public from viewing
the proceedings, taking the meeting behind closed doors automatically
binds the participants — including opposition MPs — to
secrecy.
Eight out of ten would certainly suggest one of
two things: either something is in the works that a lot of us won't
like or keeping the public in the dark about what goes on in
committees has become the default position of this government. Either
way, democracy loses.”
So not only can we or
the media not examine the workings of these committees but our
elected representatives are not allowed to speak of such 'debates'
with their constituents or the media.
This should not come as
a surprise to anyone following the steady reduction of anything other
than “approved” spin from this regime and the ever
increasing suppression of any reports or views that do not closely
follow their ideological agenda. So whilst I thank David and all the
others who have submitted ideas and comments to this 'consultation' I
do hope that none of them are expecting a positive outcome from it.
Seems that the public
is doomed to be just like Schults from Hogans Heros by the time the
next election comes around
“I
see NOTHING! I know NOTHING!” and have
blind faith in Herr Harper.
