Open by default and modern, easy to use formats

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Section 4(2.1)http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/A-1/page-1.html#h-6Section 25 of the Access to Information Acthttp://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/A-1/page-5.html#docContSubsecti… 8.1(1) of the Access to Information Regulationshttp://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-83-507/page-1.html#h…

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Public engagement with government institutions can have a tangible impact on shaping an “open by default” principle. Electronic publications of information that is of value to Canadians is of paramount importance in the Information Age, fostering transparency in the state and augmenting accountability to democratic mores of openness in order to ensure proper checks and balances are enshrined in law. To this degree, proposals for action to revitalize the Access to Information Act are timely and necessary. One existing element to enhance public information access has been the development of the Open Information Portal’s repository, which allows interested parties to search the summaries of completed Access to Information (ATI) requests previously made to the Government of Canada. This permits acquisition of public records at no cost at the requester by searching through keywords, topics or fields of interest at an organizational level. Interest parties are able to observe the organization responsible for the disclosure, disposition level, year, month, number of pages and request summary. Beyond this, certain organizations allow for an informal request to be easily made through a hyperlink that proactively completes the required fields to obtain the documents in question (excluding of course the requestor’s address information). An enhancement to this system would be to not only publish the summary of an ATI request but to also disclose the documents for each request online. This would in effect do several things: (1) reduce bureaucratic practices to increase efficiency around coordinating previously completed ATI requests; (2) reduce the environmental and financial costs associated with mailing documents solely to the requester; (3) enhance organizational transparency by moving away from contemporary practices whereby a “public record” is ironically solely sent to the requester him or herself; and (4) increase efficiency of the disclosure process by allowing ATI coordinators to focus efforts on formal requests for information received, rather than those that have already been completed in the past. When it comes to the actual disclosure of records, an effort could be made to create PDF-searchable documents through optical character rendition (ORC) software, allowing users to search through troves of information based on identifiable keywords to permit indexing and to improve ease of access for the requester. At present, documents are not searchable and are sent as an image to the requester in electronic form despite the availability of said technologies in the market. Through innovation and collaboration, creating an open by default culture and modern, easy to use formats is feasible. Lets make Canada an example to other nations and lead the way in public information access.

I believe that all government generated data should be open access. As a scientist and environmental researcher, I currently have to spend considerable amounts of time asking government officials for data, waiting for them to reply, asking again etc. Unfortunately, sometimes, after all this work, I don't even end up being granted access to what I'm looking for. Both researchers and government, and the general public could save considerable time if data was immediately open access and formatted in more modern user friendly ways. I hope to see our government make efforts toward implementing this policy and appreciate this public inquiry!

When all government spending and information is transparent by default, then half the battle on access to information will be won. Please consider including an open and transparent account of MP and Senate spending online. I see an Expenditure's by Member Report is included on an MP's information page via parl.gc.ca, but it is obvious that the House of Commons (HOC) does not have enough personnel to manage the upload of data in order to provide transparency. For example, do you expect me to believe that my MP Catherine McKenna has employees working in her Hill Office and Constituency Office and they are all sharing exactly $12,270.02 ? That is what it states in her Expenditure's by Member Report, and McKenna is not the only MP who has an unrealistic number in the column of her report called Employee Salaries. Please provide accurate and realistic numbers that reflect the truth, and ensure if an initiative such as this exists that you have the necessary personnel to maintain current and accurate figures. Otherwise this attempt at being transparent becomes a mute point. Thank you, Kathleen Martin

Yes - open and easy! Let's be leaders!

Consider whether Open Government can be extended to include government contracts. This would involve proactively redacting the contracts for information that would be withheld under section 20 ATIA and making the redacted versions available. If requesters still want information that is redacted, they would be required to use the formal ATIA request process, with opportunities to third parties to make representations regarding disclosure of the redacted portions. This would eliminate a great number of formal requests and significantly reduce the cost to government and third parties of processing those requests.

Currently, the government publishes summaries of requests [1] that meet the "Criteria for posting summaries of completed access to information requests", outlined in Appendix E of the Directive on the Administration of the Access to Information Act [2]. An individual can make an informal request for the ATI records that were previously released in response to a completed request. In my and Bernard Rudny's piece in Policy Options [3], we explain that the government should "proactively disclose the responses to nonpersonal access to information (ATI) requests. Every year, the federal government responds to more than 60,000 ATI requests and discloses more than 5 million pages. But these records are valuable not only to the requester; others could also benefit from the information they contain. "In Britain, WhatDoTheyKnow.com publishes responses to these kinds of requests online. The average document is viewed by 20 people, and some are viewed by up to 80,000 people. In Canada, on the other hand, anyone who wants to see a record disclosed under ATI must re-request it manually. "This is a simple change to make. These records are ready to be released to the public, since they have already been reviewed for privacy and security concerns. In fact, it’s already a standard practice for the provincial governments of British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as the United States under the Release to One, Release to All policy." In short, the government should proactively release the ATI records that are associated to the summaries it posts, instead of requiring an informal request. However, these disclosures don't need to be, and indeed should not be, simultaneous with the release of the records to the requester. Elizabeth Denham, Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia, thoroughly addressed this issue in an investigation report in 2011. See in particular the two sections with the heading "Timing of posting" [4]. These disclosures should be exempt from the Official Languages Act, except if the records already exist in both languages, or if the government institution considers it to be in the public interest to translate the records. These exceptions are consistent with section 12(2) of the Access to Information Act. 1. http://open.canada.ca/en/search/ati 2. http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?section=text&id=18310#appE 3. http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/march-2016/whats-needed-to-deliver-on-the-federal-governments-open-by-default-promise/ 4. https://www.oipc.bc.ca/investigation-reports/1243