Stepping down from a well regarded tenure as Solicitor General in 2006, Janet Maki was looking for fresh challenges.
Notorious around Avarua circles as a dumping ground for political appointees, the Office of the Ombudsman was located in an old wooden building dating from colonial times.
Dusty shelves, a bare minimum of shabby furniture and one aging computer. No printer, much less internet.
Resisting offers from offshore banks, Maki had found her challenge.
Memory fading fast of air-conditioned corridors of power at Crown Law Office, Maki discovered the other side of law making when, on Saint Valentine’s Day last year, parliament passed the Official Information Act.
“Let’s hope it is the start of a beautiful, transparent and open relationship between future Cook Islands governments and the people they serve,” she said in an update to fellow information commissioners.
Maki is especially hopeful because parliament made the Ombudsman responsible for implementing the new law across 70 ministries, departments, units, and other public offices—under a 12-month deadline.
When that deadline expires this month, the Official Information Act 2007 will become active as a regionally pioneering even “revolutionary” piece of legislation, one that has been resisted for at least a decade by other Pacific states.
“There has been a lot of interest particularly within the region and also internationally. I think we caught a lot of people out there by surprise who didn’t see us coming,” says Maki.
Surprise is a bit weak to describe how Maki felt facing another trial-by-fire, this time literally when 20 years of dusty records fell victim to dodgy, aging wires—her office going up in smoke in September.
Everything inside was reduced to soggy ashes and embers.
Maki had already spent months trying to squeeze funding out of the finance ministry for a few office upgrades. Now she had to replace the whole smouldering, thing.
By October, Maki lost patience with slow moving finance officials and demanded action to meet the OIA deadline.
“Getting this kind of run around is the big hold up for us,” she told daily Cook Islands News in a rare public comment, adding for good measure, “the lack of urgency and support is very disappointing.”
Looking back, Maki now sees freedom of information not just in vague terms of political sensitivities but as a physical asset needing active protection.
“One of the main benefits I foresee is the impact it will have on the way government officials record and store information,” she responded to questions from ISLANDS BUSINESS.
“Apart from stressing the importance of backing up work just in case your computer crashes or your building goes down in a cyclone or fire for example, there has been little government policy development and implementation in the area of records management.”
Across town, an adviser in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Florence Syme-Buchanan, recalls the bill being a hard sell among politicians.
“Freedom of information laws made them very uneasy.
“Some felt they had been ‘burnt’ by local media and that some reporters were guilty of irresponsible reporting, not checking facts, not balancing stories out.”
There were also doubters on the media including Cook Islands News editor John Woods.
 “I fear it will get more lip service than real acceptance. The government is ill prepared and has not resourced the Ombudsman for her duties in policing it.”
As a journalist from New Zealand, Woods is comfortable with the workings of the bill, but others have doubts the act was the right model.
Maki acknowledges the new bill may not be “perfect” but defends borrowing law from New Zealand, where media criticise a guilty-till-proven approach.
“It’s a new era for us, even a revolutionary concept, and it’s better to start with an established model”, Maki told the 5th International Conference of Information Commissioners late last year.
New transparency will have to overcome public service tradition from colonial times.
 “There is a tendency for a number of officials to believe they ‘own’ the information and can therefore decide arbitrarily when and how to use it or who to pass it on to, but the fact is, the information belongs to the government and ultimately the public that the government serves,” Maki told ISLANDS BUSINESS.
“One clear example is a lot of officials carry information around in their heads—or record it in a way only they can access. 
“It’s the old adage that ‘knowledge is power’.
Maki and Syme-Buchanan credit strong support from the deputy prime minister Dr Terepai Maoate for acceptance of the bill, but were taken aback when they called for “four or five” volunteer officials to help test run the bill.
“I did not expect any to volunteer, so was really pleasantly surprised when seven ministries stepped up,” says Syme-Buchanan.
Most public bodies have already completed a baseline survey, with the seven volunteers getting more detailed follow up.
Media are rolling their sleeves up too, with Woods getting provisional UNESCO funding for an OIA workshop aimed at journalists, officials and members of the public.
Across a hugely diverse region, a common denominator is a “culture of secrecy” that—barring any more blazes—faces a challenge of its own this month.