It takes search engines like Google a fraction of a second to find a universe of information about any conceivable topic. But try asking the B.C. government to locate data on a specific subject. You could spend months waiting for a response.
Information and privacy commissioner Elizabeth Denham made that point Tuesday and said it's not something that citizens should have to accept.
She rolled out another special report on the government's response to access-to-information requests, and the title gives it all away: "A Step Backwards."
The overall mark for timeliness has dropped significantly in the past year, processing times have increased, the average overdue time has tripled and by every measure except one, "government's performance is at its lowest point since our office began examining these statistics."
By the numbers, the average on-time response has dropped to 74 per cent from 93 over the past three years. But the way they arrived at the 93 per cent figure is quite suspect, because they just counted fulfilled requests and left out the large backlog of overdue ones. So you could argue the laggardness is about as bad as usual.
Part of the problem is a steady increase in volume being handled by about the same number of staff. Denham made a remarkable discovery in looking at the volume -- most of the increase stems from one specific request being made by political parties, presumably the official Opposition.
The request is for calendars of cabinet ministers and senior officials. Those account for three-quarters of the overall increase in requests over the last two years. Political parties asked for 587 calendars two years ago. Last year there were 1,800 requests. Most of them are fishing trips, filed to discover who is meeting whom or attempts to find out who was involved behind the scenes on public issues.
The government told Denham each one takes considerable time to process and has an impact on overall response time.
Her recommendation is similar to what's been suggested on other information fronts, and what she has suggested previously -- just post them routinely before anyone asks. The legislature is attempting something similar with MLA expenses and it's a common approach in the field.
"It is imperative that government develop a method to proactively release calendars," Denham said. It would still take some work, but it could be done much more efficiently and save considerable time and resources.
The premier's office got special attention in her report, based on findings two years ago that almost half the requests for information came back with the same answer -- no responsive records were found.
That percentage dropped last year to 29 per cent, still high, but not the highest in government. Some of it is explained by the fact many applicants misunderstand the office's mandate.
But Denham is still suspicious of how the premier's office handles information. She found it implausible in two cases that no responsive records were found.
The explanation her office was offered sounded even more implausible. "The response doesn't suggest that [the individual in question] did not send or receive mails that day, but rather that, at the time the request was received, no responsive records were located."
They were also told that many senior-ranking officials within the office of the premier do not do much substantive work by email. Instead, email is often used to set up meetings or forward invitations or questions to others.
Her office was told there are no instructions to delete emails, but some staff regularly delete mail they consider transitory.
Given the importance of the work, Denham said: "It is difficult for the average citizen to understand" how some officials could not have kept at least some important emails on specific files.
It's an article of faith among government-watchers that officials have devised innovative back-channel routes to avoid putting sensitive information in any kind of record that might be accessible to the public by formal requests. Denham is recommending an email management system that might better document key decisions.
Conversely, it might just drive the real conversations over those decisions further underground.
