By Micki Cowan
The B.C. government is losing track of time when it comes to answering Freedom of Information requests, with recent numbers showing the lowest percentage of timely requests in five years.
Data obtained under Canada’s Freedom of Information and Privacy Act this month shows one-quarter of requests were not answered on time between April 2013 and January 2014.
An analysis of the data shows that number is the lowest since 2008-09 when 28 per cent were answered late, and significantly lower than the thirteen per cent answered late last fiscal year.
The Ministry of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services, which is responsible for Freedom of Information requests, declined interview requests.
In an email response, ministry spokeswoman Melody Wey said the projected decline in timeliness this year is due to a backlog of requests from last year.
In 2012-13 the provincial government received more than 9,000 requests, which is 16 per cent more than the previous year, Wey said.
According to Wey, staff is working to improve timeliness rates by reducing the number of steps in processing Freedom of Information requests and using new software.
But NDP technology critic George Heyman said the numbers show the B.C. Liberals are not doing very well when it comes to transparency and timeliness.
“If we don’t have access in a timely manner, it means the people whose job it is to hold government to account, whether it’s the media or the opposition, can’t do that effectively,” Heyman said.
The B.C. Liberals were recently criticized in newspaper articles for returning a high number of requests with no documents found.
The obtained documents also show that late requests on average this year are overdue double the amount of days they were last year, rising to 44 days from 22.
Sean Holman, an assistant professor of journalism at Calgary’s Mount Royal University, said the decline in timeliness is likely related to censoring.
Freedom of Information offices are not just in the business of retrieving information, Holman explained, but “eliminating information before it goes out the door.”
“If we had a system where everything is disclosed, we wouldn’t have these kinds of delays,” he said.
Holman filed hundreds of Freedom of Information requests as the founder of Public Eye, a now-defunct online political watchdog website.
He is currently waiting on three late requests from the B.C. government, one of which came with a $2,000 price tag and one of which is now under appeal.
When asked if the requests were on time, Holman said he never expects that anymore.
“I always expect government to take the maximum and that’s generally speaking how it plays out.”
B.C.’s information and privacy commissioner published three reports on timeliness in 2011.
In the office’s April 2012 six-month check-up report, Commissioner Elizabeth Denham criticized the timeliness of the government in answering political party’s access requests.
“Timely responses to access requests promote public trust and confidence,” Denham wrote in the report.
The commissioner declined an interview request, but in an email response spokeswoman Cara McGregor said the commissioner has since shifted focus away from timeliness toward assessing how well the government is doing making information public before it’s requested.
When pushed for a response to questions, McGregor said timeliness in Freedom of Information responses is still a high priority for the office, but its focus shifted when it saw an improvement in the government’s overall timeliness rating.
“Future actions our office takes on the timeliness file will be made public,” she wrote.
Holman said he’s not surprised at the numbers overall.
“It’s always a fight with government and it is always going to be a fight,” he said.
Click below to see my six access requests, correspondence and two pages of relevant information from documents I received.
Part E: Pages 47-48
(*) What is the information?
This information shows how the B.C. government is doing with responding to Access to Information requests. It gives a breakdown of the numbers, which shows they are being answered more late than usual.
(*) From which department and level of government did you obtain these pages?
The B.C. provincial government’s Ministry of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services.
(*) Why was this information helpful?
This information gave an update to how the government is performing this year at Freedom of Information requests. The information was available earlier than its usual April reveal. The information adds to the story about Access to Information requests that many journalists were telling a week prior, but gives the new angle of timeliness that was not previously reported on.