Openness to replace culture of secrecy : The cook Islands

[ganpat1956]

Ombudsman, Janet Maki appears to be a complete convert to coming out of a culture of secrecy and into a culture of openness and open communication, if her address to the Public Service Commissioners’ Conference is anything to go by.

As former Solicitor General, Maki described herself as being within the ‘machine’ of government advising Government on legal issues and policies and wishing that everyone would just trust the public servants to get on with their work.

However, as Ombudsman, and being ‘outside’ the machine of government her office handles complaints on a number of issues arising from the actions of government departments, that has given her a different perspective from the lessons learnt in both roles.

The Ombudsman’s office will be responsible for ensuring compliance to the Act which does not come into force until February 2009 and in the meantime, her office is trying to get the departments up to speed with the implications of the new Act.

The Act is based on similar New Zealand legislation and similarly there are ‘no big sticks’ and the Ombudsman’s office prefers to educate the departments and raise the awareness of the importance and the benefits of complying with the spirit of the Act.

Maki said there have criticisms of the new legislation based on not tailoring it to our specific requirements and not having undergone enough consultation - both of which she refutes.

“It is not unusual for New Zealand legislation to be used” she explained and as the first jurisdiction to introduce the FOI in the Pacific, outside of NZ and Australia, it makes sense to use similar laws with familiar terms and see what works and what doesn’t work and amend it as and if necessary.

Rather than lack of consultation, perhaps it was a lack of response from the departments when the draft Bill was circulated to them. The departments appear to have underestimated the political will of the Democratic administration to go ahead and enact the Bill.

As the Ombudsman explained, good governance is a pillar here to stay and is part of the national policy including annual reports to Parliament and to the PSC and Public Service. It was important to get the Act passed to get the departments to take it seriously saying it is important to keep the public informed and the public expects it.

The impetus for the Act was largely ‘media driven’ with the local media complaining of the struggle to obtain official information which only leads to ‘leaks, rumour, innuendo and hearsay’ or the coconut wireless.

The Ombudsman said the public rely on the media and what they hear and are very interested in politics and what the government is up to and how they are carrying out their duties.

There were workshops carried out in 2004 facilitated by NZ and then in February 2004, an information paper on the benefits of good governance was presented to Government. Those who still oppose the FOI fret that the public would not understand, it would just confuse them leading to insecurity and undermining the workings of government.

Janet said it was important to have the departments on board and to become aware of the benefits of having the Act to ensure the workings of accountability and transparency.

The benefits could be better advice given to Government because if a department official realizes that their reports might become publicly released they may put in more research and time into putting together their advice to their Minister.

Rumours of appointments or licence approvals based on personal or political basis, rather than merit, would be quashed if the process were open and transparent and if every government official knew that their reports might come out in public, perhaps they would ensure they gave better advice.

Providing information means that there needs to be good record keeping but there are instances of very poor record keeping and file management and lost reports with not enough value put on the information being produced. This can be a waste of resources which are expensive to put together. This can lead to lack of precedents for HOMs and when the incumbent is no longer there, the knowledge is gone and not available to the successor who is forced to reproduce all the information that ought to have been available to them from their predecessors.

Other countries are watching with interest how the legislation will work in a small islands community and the Ombudsman is realistic that ‘won’t happen overnight’ nevertheless is optimistic that because we are smaller than most jurisdictions that perhaps it will not be such a big job to raise awareness.

Source: Welcome to the Cook Islands Herald