States has been too shy about API

It started a journey that just about every other Western democracy had begun many years earlier, a regime that would allow the public to request information with clear guidelines about what would or would not be released against which to judge the response.

At the time sceptics argued it was not necessary – ‘just what is it you think the States doesn’t tell you?’ was one deputy’s stance. Well, quite a lot.

The Scrutiny Management Committee has now launched an overdue review of how the access to public information regime is operating and whether any changes could improve it.

Predictions of civil servants drowning under requests when they should be doing much more important work, and the costs running away, have simply not materialised.

The cultural change that this was designed to deliver with a more transparent States, the timely push of information rather than the pull, has gone only so far.

Government’s tendency to pull down the shutters when things get uncomfortable, or to simply reach for confidentiality by default, still exists.

There remains a need for an independent appeal mechanism that the public can have confidence in, something that could also monitor the effectiveness of the regime and recommend changes on a rolling basis, not relying on States-led ad hoc reviews.

The States has been far too shy about letting the public know that the API code exists, something acknowledged early in 2017 with pledges of an awareness drive that never materialised in a meaningful way. This makes Scrutiny’s job of assessing its effectiveness more difficult.

Analysing the requests received and answers given goes only so far – asking the public sector how well they are doing will draw an obvious response.

This year there have been 26 API responses published already, in the whole of 2014 there were 15. If the States was readily providing all the information it should, that growing trend would not be seen.