{"id":2169,"date":"2022-12-12T00:03:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-12T00:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secteur-public-sector.ca\/?p=2169"},"modified":"2024-09-02T21:46:39","modified_gmt":"2024-09-02T21:46:39","slug":"improving-record-keeping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secteur-public-sector.ca\/en\/improving-record-keeping\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving record keeping crucial to open government, says former head of federal public service"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Originally posted<\/a> on December 12, 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The former head of the federal public service says neglect and underinvestment in recordkeeping is undermining the government\u2019s \u201clofty language\u201d about its commitment to open government, and making it harder to locate documents people ask for under access-to-information law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Wernick says the government\u2019s archives resemble a scene out of an Indiana Jones movie, with boxes and boxes of records waiting to be scanned, sorted and organized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview with The Globe and Mail, he said \u201cthe language of open government\u201d \u2026 is built on \u201ca very shaky foundation\u201d because of a lack of investment in organizing records so they can be easily located.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said there was a disconnect \u201cbetween rhetoric and delivery\u201d when it came to Ottawa\u2019s <\/a>stated commitment to open government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs with many things with this government \u2026 there is a gap between the lofty language and the execution or delivery,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat you will find is it is very spotty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ottawa\u2019s National Action Plan on Open Government commits it to being more transparent and accountable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Access to Information Act also places a legal requirement on the government to keep organized records and to publish guides each year to help people find them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The act requires it to publish a detailed description of the types of records held by government departments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canada\u2019s journalism community urges fix to federal freedom-of-information system<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOpen Government is about making government more accessible to everyone. This means giving greater access to government data and information to the Canadian public and the businesses community,\u201d the government\u2019s website on open government says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Wernick, who was the federal government\u2019s top bureaucrat \u2013 the Clerk of the Privy Council \u2013 from 2016 to 2019, said there was overall a lack of dedication to recordkeeping in Ottawa and a great \u201cmess of things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Records were scattered around different government departments on floppy discs, diskettes, paper record files and in boxes, as well as on servers and in the Cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He told The Globe that some federal departments and institutions organized their records well and had put tools in place to make them easy to find, but others were chaotic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLike many things, you\u2019ll find pockets of excellence and some really cool things that are happening, and then there are other areas which are \u2026 rusted and shambolic. There\u2019s a lack of consistency of effort around,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the amount of information being generated by the government \u2013 including e-mails \u2013 was more than its \u201cabsorption capacity\u201d to get it digitized and scanned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government\u2019s archive, he said, has \u201can enormous warehouse, like something out of Indiana Jones movies\u201d full of boxes of records waiting to be organized, but there are neither the people nor the money to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said there should be more investment in developing search tools so that government records can be easily located, including if someone requests them under freedom-of-information laws. Organizing records would also help the federal policy of proactive disclosure, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat is really important is the navigation and recordkeeping. It\u2019s just so uneven,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Wernick said with some records dating back centuries, as well as stacks of paper and a plethora of e-mails, deciding what to keep for posterity was a skill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Retrieval and information management should be an integral part of an open-government agenda, including how to tag, classify and sort records, he said, but it was far down the government\u2019s priority list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said \u201cinvesting in basic conservation\u201d and protecting records from flood and fire was also crucial, to stop them from being degraded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Wernick told a Commons committee last month<\/a> that the offices of the prime minister and federal ministers should no longer be exempt from access-to-information law, and there should be a greater onus in Ottawa on pro-actively disclosing as much information to the public as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monica Granados, press secretary to Treasury Board president Mona Fortier, said the government has \u201censhrined pro-active publication in law, strengthening openness and transparency across government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe open-government portal now holds 34,000 data\/information records, 2 million pro-active disclosures from more than 160 institutions, as well as summaries of completed access-to-information requests,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The former head of the federal public service says neglect and underinvestment in recordkeeping is undermining the government\u2019s \u201clofty language\u201d about its commitment to open government, and making it harder to locate documents people ask for under access-to-information law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1071,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nImproving record keeping crucial to open government, says former head of federal public service - Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/secteur-public-sector.ca\/en\/improving-record-keeping\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Improving record keeping crucial to open government, says former head of federal public service - 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