Culture change, not cash, a better way to get government transparency
If GN leaders set the tone by making access to information a priority, the message will filter down through the public service
Nunavut’s information and privacy commissioner says paying entry-level public servants better will help speed up the process of responding to access to information requests. (FIle photo)
Throwing money at the problem — the classic Nunavut solution to darn near everything — can’t be the best way to make the GN more transparent.
Raising the salaries of some Government of Nunavut public servants is one way to improve compliance with the territory’s access to information laws, according to information and privacy commissioner Graham Steele.
He made that case to Nunavut MLAs last week during a hearing of the legislative assembly’s government oversight committee. Its members were reviewing Steele’s annual report for the 2022-23 fiscal year.
Some GN departments are dismally slow in responding to requests people make under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
One reason, according to Steele, is that the bureaucrats tasked with handling access to information requests are entry-level staff — the lowest-paid workers — who don’t have the benefit of staff housing, and who haven’t been given the training to properly carry out that responsibility.
“[N]othing fundamentally is going to change if the person doing the work is not being paid enough money,” Steele told committee members.
This newspaper is often on the same page as the commissioner, who, like Nunatsiaq News, is interested in seeing the government provide more information to the people it serves.
However, with all due respect to Mr. Steele, nothing fundamentally is going to change if cabinet ministers and deputy ministers only pay lip service to openness.
The notion that better pay will fix everything is a knee-jerk reaction found too often in Nunavut. It overlooks some cheaper solutions that could be implemented — if only GN leadership would take it seriously and make it a higher priority in the way their departments work.
First, the Government of Nunavut should foster a culture of openness.
If access requests aren’t getting processed because they’re being given to entry-level staff, give the responsibility to more senior bureaucrats. If access requests aren’t getting handled because they’re given to workers who don’t have housing, then move that responsibility to employees who do.
It’s a simple matter of walking the walk. GN access to information requests aren’t handled well not because workers aren’t paid enough; they’re not handled well because — from the top down — leadership doesn’t make it a priority.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made “open by default” mantra in the federal public service in 2015. The spirit of an access to information law is that every government document that’s produced should be accessible to members of the public, unless it meets one of the exemptions listed in the law, usually related to security or personal information.
Nunavut should follow Trudeau’s lead and cultivate a culture of openness.
That starts at the top, with ministers who answer media questions in a timely and full manner.
But it also means letting public servants talk to the public — and the media — about what they do. They’re the experts. They know what happens at the ground level in hospitals and schools.
But they’re muzzled by government policies that steer media requests to a communications office instead of letting the experts talk.
Across Canada, governments at all levels started moving toward proactive disclosure about 20 years ago. Governments increasingly make records available to the public (usually online) as a matter of routine — without having to be asked for it.
If entry-level GN employees aren’t getting the access to information job done because they’re not paid enough, not trained or are worried about their housing, perhaps they’re not the best people to be handling this important responsibility.
There are other methods of giving the public the access it deserves to government records that don’t involve simply jacking up bureaucrats’ paycheques.
What the job of the mla,s and are they taught how to ask the questions,
Good editorial corey, very well said. At the end of the day if the person in that entry level position has the equivalent of a 9th grade education , no amount of housing, training or money will fix the problem. The classic put them in entry level positions and they can train their ways to the top has failed and failed over and over again. A real shift in mentality is needed and it shouldn’t mean hiring more southern consultants with @gov email addresses
Cabinet sets the tone and the direction. Everything is secret, unless they deem it otherwise.
If the government wanted to be open, they would begin by making Cabinet decisions public, except in specific cases where confidentiality is needed for a specified period of time.
Steel says pay the ATIPP Coordinators more.
Larocque says shift the work to higher paying public servants, presumably then reprofile the old ATIPP Coordinator jobs into new jobs to cover the original work of those higher paid public servants who are now doing ATIPP.
Same end result.
Get rid of the deadweight managers (position) and pay a decent salary to the workers who deserve it. Then you will see change.
What managers are giving ATIPP tasks to entry level staff? That is ridiculous.
It is, but I’ve seen it.
I can understand the thinking – monotonous, time-consuming, detail oriented work that is seen as distracting from the ‘real’ work.
Most people today get their information from online sources. It is the rare time that someone actually hopefully calls into a government office, on the off chance someone will answer, in order to find something out.
If governments across Canada have been moving towards proactive disclosure, especially online, then the GN is going in the opposite direction.
The recent format changes to http://www.gov.nu.ca have removed an enormous number of links and online content related to public documents that were previously available.
As usual, at GN, even an Information commissioner seems to be quite willing to ignore the elephant in the room.
The GN has recently and systematically denied access by Nunavummiut to information on what it is doing, what it has done, and how it goes about its business.
And ironically, they must have paid some IT people some big bucks to do this.
There is an issue with remote work in the Government of Nunavut that needs attention. Some employees are absent without being questioned, and some are still receiving pay even though they have been out of the country for months. The Health Department seems to have the most significant problem, with managers and directors failing to keep track of employee whereabouts and return dates. Additionally, some employees are applying for sick leave with doctors’ notes from other countries. It’s concerning that the issue of GN losing a considerable amount of money due to these problems is not being addressed, while the topic of ATTIP comes up repeatedly on Nunatsiaq News.
The transparency in small remote Municipalities will NOT apply, as it is NOT subject as decentralization with GN, not will not be MERIT! The levels of newly appointed as Deputy Minister’s, or Executives 95.5% of their portfolio (has NO Merit reflect on Socio-Economic Development) at all levels i.e. 50 job’s that were JUST pulled out to southern private Businesses on Naja Isabelle Home Care in Chesterfield Inlet. The complaint’s were NOT subject to MERIT, as it was investigated both by the RCMP and the PUBLIC HEALTH. This may have concluded to FALSE accusations due to removal of their JOB’s at the HOME CARE!
The Department of Family Services Minister and its’ Deputy Minister administer this portfolio, as bias reflect on small remote Municipality, and any other Non-Decentralized communities across Nunavut with the GN, which is know as ghetto with steroids!
Looking almost half a century into the future is very difficult. This is probably especially true of the Arctic, where resettlement and a clash of cultures has produced very rapid social, cultural, and economic change. During the past half-century, this change has been marked most notably by an abandonment of
the aboriginal life-style. At best, this research can only attempt to predict the directions of change into the future by working from the assumption that there will be no change in current government policies for regional development in the Arctic. Inevitably, this assumption will be false, but, hopefully, by making
this assumption, there will emerge a picture of some future existence for the Inuit which will stand as a bench-mark from which desired futures might be better drawn and systematically planned.