Transparency is as clear as mud
1 Feb 2005 by Evoluted New Media
JUST weeks after new public access rules came in under the UK Freedom of Information Act, precisely what is meant by transparency is still not clear or easily understood.
JUST weeks after new public access rules came in under the UK Freedom of Information Act, precisely what is meant by transparency is still not clear or easily understood.
This is according to leading academics and experts at the launch of the ESRC Public Services Programme at the British Academy. Administrations in other countries – Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland – have failed to deliver on the openness promised with similar legislation, says Alasdair Roberts, a Canadian freedom of information specialist and Associate Professor at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University in the United States.
Instead, they have developed elaborate systems for managing sensitive requests for information. And he says there is evidence to suggest that officials in the UK are similarly putting in place controls to ensure that ministers here are not tripped up by questions from MPs and journalists.
"The aim of the research programme," said Director Christopher Hood, Gladstone Professor of Government and Fellow of All Souls, University of Oxford, "is a full and frank examination of transparency and its consequences."
According to Alasdair Roberts, there are ways of dealing with the worst effects of governments developing procedures to handle sensitive inquiries.
The first is to force officials to commit their procedures to paper, somaking them vulnerable to disclosure. The second is by using the information commissioner. Too often, in other countries, Roberts says, commissioners have treated all requests for information in the same way, whereas, in reality, governments routinely discriminate against sensitive inquiries from MPs and journalists. He says that commissioners should similarly give special rapid responses to complaints about delay or obstruction.
Hood said: "Transparency is regarded as a central aspect of modern democracy and public service reform. Open access to information and doing away with secrecy is seen as key to preventing corruption and promoting public accountability.
"A host of benefits are assumed to flow from it, including certainty, predictability and fairness, as well as making it possible to challenge what the authorities tell us. But precisely because it is so freely invoked by those anxious to bring about social change and improvements, it merits closer and more critical attention than it has had so far."
