Open government has to be more than just dumping information
DISCUSSIONS are well under way about improving open government in Guernsey - and on current evidence, it could not come a moment too soon.
DISCUSSIONS are well under way about improving open government in Guernsey - and on current evidence, it could not come a moment too soon.
By December, the Policy Council has to report back to the States on the issue.
Deputies, departments, committees and other key parties including experts from the Ministry of Justice have been consulted.
But anyone expecting a full-blown freedom of information regime is, if experience is any guide, going to have to wait.
Guernsey is already lagging well behind most of the world when it comes to the public right to know.
Creeping signs of progress here and there mask a deeper problem.
Want to know about the waste consultation? Masses of documentation has been put online about the process.
Want to know how Public Services arrived at its estimated costs for the different ways of dealing with the waste? Well, you will have to wait until its Billet report, it seems.
And that is key - it is not just about an information dump, but providing relevant information in an accessible way.
More pertinent is the current argument rumbling around about the compensation payment made to UK fishermen.
The company concerned, Interfish Wireons Ltd, has a multi-million-pound turnover from its operations across the UK, offering a hint at what the States might have coughed up.
But the taxpayer will, at this rate at least, never know how much of their money has been wasted by political decisions to implement a failed licensing regime - and whatever the legal costs were of defending it.
There are precedents for governments reaching out-of-court compensation settlements and releasing the costs of the deal.
One particularly pertinent case involved the UK government and Spanish fishing companies led by Factortame, who accepted £55m. in March 2000 after a dispute over measures to stop them fishing in UK waters.
The cost of the deal was revealed in an answer to a parliamentary question.
There has been public pressure for backbenchers to act over this.
The response has been, in some quarters, just to keep a close eye on the next States accounts.
Elsewhere, the Guernsey Press has been pursuing details of the operation of the Medical Specialist Group. Because it receives public money, if it was a situation mirrored in the UK the group would be subject to the freedom of information act.
Simple information like how many people have been treated, how many have had treatment delayed beyond the targets set by the States, what those timescales are and who works in what department has all been blocked or fudged.
But there is no tool for the media or the public - other than perhaps persuading a deputy to ask a written or oral question of a minister on their behalf - of extracting the information if the States body does not want to release it.
At least under an FoI regime there has to be an explanation for not releasing.
Some good examples of openness in the States are blighted by inaccessibility - what is the point of putting the information online if the public cannot access and understand it easily?
Achieving a good, open flow of information is not going to happen overnight.
But given the strides being made elsewhere, there is plenty of good practice to learn from - and pitfalls to be avoided.
And there is a wealth of data countries such as the UK release as a matter of course that is just not accessible in Guernsey.
Want to know about average sentencing for different offences?
Go to the Ministry of Justice website and it is there for all to access.
Want to know GCSE results, which schools achieved what level of grade A to C including English and maths?
If you live in England you can, if you live in Guernsey you cannot.
Education releases different statistics, which make comparisons difficult, and says it does not collect the data - although it is difficult to accept that it cannot do the sums.
These GCSE statistics have been the centre of a row in Jersey recently when they were released, reluctantly, after a request using their information regime, along with calls for it to be done automatically next time.
The Policy Council was due to report back last month updating progress on the outcomes of the firefighters' tribunal.
The independent report held a key finding for information campaigners - that there should be a presumption that reports commissioned from the public purse will be made publicly available unless there are specific grounds for doing otherwise.
Ministers are coming back within months with a detailed assessment of the progress made on that report.
The parliamentary committees, as they work together on introducing good governance, are going to have to look at the release of information, too.
It took the UK several years of getting good practice in place before it could deal with the ramifications of legislation enshrining a FoI system.
There is little point of a regime with time limits for answers if, for example, the information is simply not in an accessible form.
Of course, adopting a proactive release policy is key to stopping a regime getting bogged down.
Indications are the initial stages of Guernsey's information regime will be working towards new guidelines of good practice to be followed in the public sector, a situation fraught with the dangers of being a toothless animal when disagreements arise, but at least a step forward to opening the doors.
