Open government push requires ‘cultural shift’ in public service, federal documents warn

Internal documents warn Liberals that “open by default” will be a big shift for bureaucrats conditioned to be secretive.

Thestar.com
Feb. 4, 2016
By Alex Boutillier

The Liberals’ promise to pry open government requires nothing less than “cultural change” within the public service, warn documents obtained by the Star.

Treasury Board President Scott Brison was told in November that there are significant hurdles to the Liberals’ campaign pledge to reform access to information laws, make government information open by default, and more effectively communicate with the public.

Documents prepared for Brison describe a federal culture of “limited disclosure, insular policy making,” which takes into account the “federal view only.”

To implement the Liberals’ ambitious democratic reform agenda, that culture will need to shift to one of “proactive release, engagement and connectivity, (and) broad leadership on open government.”

It’s not clear exactly how the government intends to change the culture of some 257,000 employees in the core public service. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already made clear he wants to end the era of the federal government deciding and acting on issues unilaterally, putting an emphasis on meeting with provincial premiers and, on Friday, the mayors of Canada’s largest cities.

“The government holds a largely untapped wealth of mostly unclassified information of interest to Canadians,” read the documents, obtained under access to information laws. “This information is not sufficiently leveraged to fuel the digital economy, spur innovation, and give Canadian business a competitive edge.”

Trudeau made openness and accountability a key plank in his party’s election platform. The idea is to make government information “open by default,” unlike the current system where citizens need to resort to access to information requests that can take months or even years to process.

But releasing more information about government operations, the documents warn, carries with it the risk of public relations headaches for the new government.

In an interview Tuesday, Brison acknowledged that risk.

“(But) you can’t expect Canadians to trust us if we can’t trust them,” Brison said.

“The other thing to keep in mind is we will make better decisions when we engage Canadians in the decision-making process. The old days where governments would be covetous and secretive (with) information to try and make a decision because government thought they were smarter than citizens, are over.”

When it comes to changing the public services culture, Brison suggested the Liberals need to lead by example - and the leadership starts with the prime minister.

“(Trudeau) is absolutely committed to this throughout government,” Brison said.

“For most Canadians, the transparency bus has left the station. You try to explain to a millennial why a lot of this information isn’t rendered public, and you lose them.”
But it’s not just the culture of secrecy and risk aversion preventing information from getting to Canadians.

The documents note Canada’s dated privacy and access to information acts are falling out of sync with technological development.

The Access to Information Act, for instance, has not been substantially changed since the early 1980s when most government business was conducted on paper.

The documents prepared for Brison note that the Liberals have also promised to strengthen the access to information regime, which is beset with delays and struggling to keep up with yearly increases in the number of requests.

Ironically, any suggestions on how the Treasury Board could strengthen the access to information system were censored from the documents, which were obtained under the access to information system.

While the challenges are many, the documents suggest it may be the right time to revisit the federal government’s communications guidelines, last overhauled in 2006.

“The 24/7 news cycle, the proliferation of information available on the Internet, and the increasing complexity of horizontal government issues present new and significant communications challenges for departments individually, and for the government as a whole,” the documents read.

“The speed of communications and accessibility of information requires a nimble communications function within the federal government, and communications professionals need to ‘re-tool’ to work effectively in the new communications environment.”

The documents caution, however, that as government communications moves away from transition press releases into new areas like video and social media, “there is a risk that the lines between partisan and non-partisan become more difficult to define.”