Freely accessible information should be the norm for the ACT government

It is a frustrating situation. Government information is produced, collated and written on behalf of its citizens, who have every right to access and review it.

Freedom of information processes should be streamlined, simple and accessible. The teams required to process requests ought to be adequately staffed and experienced, adept at making quick decisions with a culture of release rather than a culture of withholding.

A review by Deloitte of the ACT's Freedom of Information Act found "overly onerous" and complex requests can result in staff working full-time for months to process the documents.

One request took a directorate 446 working days to process. Another request took a full-time public servant four months to process and a senior executive spent hundreds of hours reviewing the documents.

The ACT government should act immediately on a key recommendation of the review: to make permanent the temporarily funded staff processing information requests.

But then the ACT government should consider again the relationship between the information it holds and the community which elects it to govern.

There are legitimate reasons why information needs to be kept from the public. The government should not make a habit of releasing genuinely private personal information.

Information relating to procurement may well be commercial-in-confidence, and cabinet understandably needs to be able to consider information first in private.

These reasons, however, should not be waved around as excuses to deny the community the right to see how its government operates and makes decisions, and on what information those decisions are based.

READ MORE:

Take, for example, the Deloitte review of the Freedom of Information Act, which was completed more than a year ago but has only been released recently. It had to be the subject of a freedom of information request.

It should have been released as a matter of course. In the digital age, there is virtually no limit on the amount of material a government can publish, unencumbered by the expense of printing copies.

The ACT government should embrace this opportunity to become the most transparent government in the world. It would take a significant cultural shift within its ranks, but it would be a true acknowledgement of its purpose: to serve its citizens, be accountable and not keep them in the dark.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: