New information law opens a new era

Lisa Williams-Lahari
Media firsts are nothing new to the Cook Islands; having been the first Pacific nation to bring stereo broadcasting to the region with FM radio in the late 70’s, and then initiating Pacific-owned broadcast television in the 90’s. Its latest first, that of legislation allowing individuals to access government files in the name of accountability, could well be its toughest.

The Cook Islands Official Information Act was passed by parliament in mid-February, and is designed to put more government information into public hands. That major tick for accountability will ensure the Cooks does well on the FEMM report card for 2008, and as with other firsts, other Pacific nations will be keen to take what works from it while watching out for potential problem areas.

Fast on the heels of welcoming the positive response from regional governments and media organisations, Cook Islands Ombudsman Janet Maki admits the biggest problem will be opening up the culture of secrecy surrounding most government work.

That culture of off-limits information has long been an every day hurdle for Pacific journalists, including former PINA Freedom Award-winning journalist Jason Brown. Currently Auckland-based, Brown raised niggles over lack of consultation and transparency issues with a piece of legislation aimed at promoting access to and clarity of information from government.

He’s also worried the Cooks legislation derives too much from the New Zealand version and may face similar problems with long waits for information. Overall though, the new laws will solve the very problem he faced in his journalistic work—lack of a consistent approach to information sharing, with an often blunt refusal from officials to respond to probing questions delving beneath a press-release surface.

For her own part, it is likely to be Maki herself that preaches the freedom of information legislation, having gone through her own conversion on the topic. In her previous role as Solicitor-General, she didn’t see the reason for legislating access to official records. It was only when she made the recent switch to Ombudsman that she realised the need to legislate for something as frightening as opening up records for public scrutiny.

“In carrying out investigations into some of the complaints received under the Ombudsman Act, it’s been quite difficult getting the relevant information from some of the departments which can’t locate the relevant info—or it’s recorded in such a way that it would take some time to go through everything to find it.”

The Cooks shares a common problem with other Pacific Islands governments where systems and processes for keeping information filed, stored and archived are not focused on keeping records retrievable.

“A lot of valuable information is lost because it’s either buried in the wrong files or no one can remember who the last person with it was,” says Maki. She says that information gap doesn’t just undermine the ability of public officials to work with reliable data and records. Those records and information were produced at costs of time, effort and public money.

The Ombudsman met with her New Zealand counterpart during an International Information Commissioners’ meeting in New Zealand last November, setting the context for technical assistance and support from New Zealand to help steer the implementation of the Official Information Act.

“It was an eye opener,” says Maki. “It was not, as some of us had naively imagined, just a question of bringing the Act into force and away the public goes in requesting info and the department provides it.  All kinds of issues come up. How are the departments keeping their records/information at the moment? What is the quality of the records/information? Are they able to deal with the requests? Are they able to provide that information in a timely manner, given the time limits introduced by the Act?”

Maki has bought some time to answer those questions—a 12-month grace period will also allow for public education and awareness amongst government ministries.

Replacing secrecy with open access to most records will have a trade off in personal attitudes to work, says the Ombudsman.

“There are some officials that resent their advice being leaked to the media but I fail to see why that should be a concern in terms of the fact that you’re paid to provide that advice and if you’ve done the best job you can, then you should be ready and able to defend it.”

Information management and retrieval will mean investments in software, hardware, and people to run it all. But Maki is confident the initial expense will be justified in the long-term. For government media consultant Florence Syme-Buchanan, the tabling of the bill comes after four years of touting the notion of information being best placed in the hands of the people, not bureaucrats.

Up until former Prime Minister Sir Terepai Maoate endorsed the bill, successive Cook Islands leaders and governments had given lipservice, reluctant to table the Official Information legislation because of the sweeping political changes and resources needed.

The Cooks example will have many Pacific nations nodding in agreement. Mention freedom and information in one sentence and politicians and government officials feel threatened.

Helping people understand transparency is a public duty rather than a threat to the public good, will help to create a disclosure regime everyone is comfortable with, says Syme-Buchanan.

“By that I mean, officials are comfortable with releasing information and have improved in-house records systems and the public are happy with the way they can now seek and access government information.”