Transparency? When one door opens another closes

But with the access to information code, that is all supposed to be changing.

We all know its inadequacies.

No independent appeal undermines public confidence and means that cultural change is tempered.

It is not statutory, so can be ignored anyway if the public shame is worth the cost.

But it has seen some progress.

Every six months we get a list of reports commissioned by the committees and whether they will be released.

Of course, you are still playing a guessing game to judge what is important and what is not, and appealing any decision to withhold is hamstrung in the same way.

And it would be better if things were proactively released, rather than someone making a decision to wait to be asked.

But where a committee has given a green light, in theory that should be it.

Except.

Except it isn’t when the States has signed a contract which gives the power to the consultant to decide instead.

Since the start of October I’ve been trying to see a report commissioned in July 2015 by KPMG Channel Islands on the Strategic Asset Management Plan.

SAMP has always been a lost opportunity, it got watered down by the last Assembly, but we are now starting to see some progress in how the States uses its vast property portfolio.

Using space efficiently, selling off unnecessary buildings, ending rental deals that aren’t value for money are – all of this is of interest to the taxpayer.

So when you see a report entitled SAMP service review, it pricks a little interest.

When you see it is available on request, well, you request it.?

But then things went awry.

After some back and forth it was disclosed that there was a note on the report to get the consultants’ go-ahead before anyone outside the States can see it.

Some more back and forth and the listing now says: ‘No exemption applies and the States of Guernsey is content for the report to be available on request.

‘However, the terms of contract dictate that the author of the report must approve its release.

‘In this case the author declined the States of Guernsey’s request for permission to make the report available.’

You just could not make it up.

Consultants do not always have the warmest welcome from the public – there’s a feeling that the expertise should already exist in the public sector to compile these reports anyway.

People’s mouths drop a little more when they see from the start of this term until the end of 2016 that the States has spent £946,271.50 on outside help – a figure garnered from an information request.

That includes £358,000 for PwC’s benchmarking review of Education and Home Affairs which both committees are doing their best to ignore, despite having supported the reviews, and despite their senior staff being the genesis for the cost savings ideas within them.

So when you learn that you cannot even see the results of some of this work paid for by public money it becomes even more galling.

The KPMG report in itself is said to be pretty minor, essentially related to moving chairs around in Frossard House, but the lessons for transparency are what matters.

For the record, in correspondence, KPMG has said that the report contains intellectual property sensitive to the company, but it would be happy for a summary of what it is about to be released.

So there you have it.

There has been a past trend to lock information away because it was not written with the knowledge it will be released.

That was, as we can see here, the starting point.

Clearly, with the code in place that is unsustainable.

The culture should be that everything is for public consumption unless there is an overwhelming reason for it not to be.

Now the States’ overwhelming reasons are still some way removed from the public’s, and indeed other modern democracies.

We can see that with information that is readily released elsewhere that is still not available here – even in comparison with Jersey where the access to information is enshrined in law.

What has happened with KPMG must not be allowed to happen again.

There is a new framework in place since that report was commissioned which should offer some reassurance, but time will tell on that.

Still within the States it remains too much of an embedded culture to reach for secrecy.

It is why when the big announcement was made about the marketing activities that will surround the release of the Guernsey Potato Peel Pie Society Film, Visit Guernsey would say it had been given extra money, but, when asked, refused to say how much, fearing giving away too much information to its competitors.

How someone else will take advantage is anyone’s guess.

You could imagine the patter: ‘Come to Jersey, where you can use a pair of binoculars to see the island the film was based on.’

That position was exposed as even more ridiculous when you can find the figure in the 2018 Budget, you just need to know where to look.

The States is working more and more with outside agencies, a trend that will only continue.

We need to ensure that there is adequate transparency applying to these deals so that value for money can be seen, not just assumed.

That requires not just the States accepting the code, but its partners too – whether they are consultants, charities or private companies.

Now that really would be progress.