B.C. government fails to meet deadlines on one in five FOI requests, review finds

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      The Government of British Columbia routinely fails to meet legal requirements for freedom-of-information requests.

      That’s the conclusion of an independent review of the province’s handlings of requests made under the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act (FIPPA ).

      “We saw regular contraventions of FIPPA and deterioration of response times with some modest improvement at the beginning of 2017,” reads the September 20 report signed by Drew McArthur, acting information and privacy commissioner for B.C.

      “Overall I am frustrated to see that government routinely operates in contravention of BC law, especially considering the 75% increase in time extension requests to my office over the past two years,” it continues. “Time extensions under FIPPA are intended to be the exception rather than the norm, as each extension delays providing results to the applicant. Ministers need to prioritize responses to access to information requests.”

      The review found that the province’s Information Access Operations team missed deadlines on one in five of the requests it receives.

      When this 20 percent of files was eventually delivered, the average number of days they were overdue was 62.

      In addition, the review found that files delivered on time were still taking longer than they should. That’s happened via an increase in the government’s use of time extensions.

      From 2012-13 to 2014-15, the percentage of files requiring a deadline extension was between 21 and 22 percent. By 2016-17, that number had increased to 37 percent.

      “Section 10 of FIPPA authorizes a public body to take an extension of up to 30 additional business days when more detail is needed from the applicant, a large number of records need to be searched, or when more time is needed to consult with a third party or another public body,” the report reads. “The percentage of requests where time extensions have been taken has steadily increased from 16% in 2008 to 34% in 2016-17.”

      The review found that when it categorized requests based on the person who filed them—describing them as a business, law firm, or political party, for example—the group for which the government scored the lowest on response time, was for journalists.

      “We found no evidence that media requests are intentionally treated differently than any other requests, but government should investigate why additional delays occur at review,” the report reads.

      The acting information and privacy commissioner made eight recommendations with his report.

      Among them, that the government do more in the way of proactive disclosure (so that there will be fewer requests under freedom-of-information legislation to begin with), and that it “take whatever action necessary to respond to access requests within the timelines allowed by FIPPA”.

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