Proactive disclosure

Last updated

Proactive disclosure is the act of releasing information before it is requested. In Canada, this refers to an environment where information is released routinely through electronic means with the exception of information that the government is required to protect due to privacy risks. This could refer to information regarding citizens' social insurance numbers or military operations.

Contents

Proactive disclosure differs from reactive disclosure, as reactive disclosure occurs when a request is made, while proactive disclosure occurs without the filing of the request. [1] Proactive disclosure has also been referred to as stealing thunder, [2] active disclosure in the United States and suo moto disclosure in Latin which means upon its own initiative. [1]

History

The earliest way information was disclosed was seen in ancient Greece through criers or bellmen. Criers were hired in medieval times to walk the streets and call for attention, then read out important news such as royal proclamations or local bylaws. They would also play a role in passing the information across villages. This role changed when newspapers, radios, television and the internet became innovative parts of society. [1]

Governments

Within the government, proactive disclosure is meant to inform citizens of information that allows them to hold the government accountable. Information that puts private or public good in harm’s way is not disclosed. This term is used frequently when discussing open government, meaning information is easily available to the public and at a regular basis due to the benefit of technology on disseminating information. [3]

Many consider proactive disclosure and the ability to have access to information as a way to watch over those in power within society. This is especially true for governments who collect a wide range of information, which citizens often use to hold the government accountable. [4]

Transparency and proactive disclosure are often associated in terms of creating open government.

Canada

In the case of Canada, the government has specific measures under the Treasury Board of Canada [5] that they proactively disclose data in order to highlight transparency and allow for the board to oversee public resources in the federal government.

However, all information released under proactive disclosure must be held under the Access to Information Act or the Privacy Act , with any information that is normally withheld under those acts not being disclosed on the website. [6]

The Canadian government has also made promises to be open by default with proactive disclosure in their Open Government Partnership (OGP) Third Action Plan [7]

The open by default principle not only provides Canadians with proactive information release, but is also meant to improve efficiency for requests for information or the ability to gain information such as personal details about themselves. [7] One of the key focuses is placed on the streamlining and increased progress on departments proactively disclosing information on spending and human resources online. The Government of Canada believes the proactive disclosure of information and self-service tools will strengthen the type of data being released. [7]

For instance, they have to disclose financial resources within departments such as travel expenses and human resource material, and allow this information to be available on the department websites. This means that the department is more easily monitored by the body in power, as well as citizens. The three things that must be published are the travel and hospitality expenses of specific government officials, contracts over $10,000 and when positions are reclassified. [5]

History in Canada

Proactive disclosure came into Canada in 2004 when it came to disclosing information on contracts over $10,000 and position reclassification, with grants and contributions being under the proactive disclosure policy since 2005. The Treasury Board of Canada discloses and observes these policies. [8]

The Canadian system was put in place in a way that allows for digital record management and could be a step towards a full proactive disclosure model at the federal level. There is an ongoing review of the Access to Information Act [8] and full proactive disclosure in the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada.

The use of proactive disclosure at the federal level is seen within Natural Resources Canada, which has three web portals releasing raw data on subjects such as road networks, electoral boundaries, and topographic maps. [8]

Municipal and provincial levels

At the local level, open data and proactive disclosure are being linked together. Cities from Vancouver to Toronto began introducing open data portals in 2010. [5] These initiatives are focusing primarily on providing raw data proactively to fill an open government model.

All provinces nationwide now provide online portals to disclose data. However, Quebec and British Columbia were the first provinces to focus on proactive disclosure.

Quebec was the first to look into proactive disclosure in Canada in 2006. In 2009, the province of Quebec also regulated that municipalities in the province would have to migrate to proactive disclosure for data and internal documents. [5]

Federal

Federally, the purpose is said to improve the role of Parliament and allow Canadians to hold both elected officials and public sector officials accountable. [9] This is done through three main sections; travel and hospitality expenses, contracts and position reclassification.

Travel and hospitality expenses

An example within Canada is the travel and hospitality reimbursement for government employees. The government has provided a web page to showcase the travel and hospitality expenses that occurred under the Treasury Board Secretariat by the President, Parliamentary Secretary and their exempt staff and senior level employees, such as deputy ministers and other equal levels. [10] The proactive disclosure of this information is meant to highlight the agreements made under the National Joint Council in regards to the reimbursement of officials. [11]

Contracts

The government also has the proactive disclosure policy in regards to contracts that have a value of over $10,000. The website for the government sector will post document changes every three months, which includes new information or new contracts. The rule for this type of disclosure is once again laid out by the Treasury Board, as the governing body who monitors the government. The objective of this section is said to help construct services in a way that better represents a fair value for Canada. [12] This type of information release means that contracts must also stand up against the eyes of Canadians, as well as apply to other government policies and agreements. [13]

Position reclassification

The government of Canada also announced in 2004 [6] that information on position changes or reclassification of a position in the public service must release the information to Canadians. They state that the website must release this information and meet the guidelines set out by the Treasury Board of Canada. Reclassification can include changes such as: [6]

  • Department or program mandate change
  • Manager reorganization
  • More effective employment plans
  • Response to vacancies
  • Classification grievances
  • External conditions with resource change

In order to ensure the change in reclassification is done openly, especially in regards to the cost associated, the Canadian government states they will strive for publicly displaying the knowledge and being transparent and accountable for these decisions.

Debate over proactive disclosure in Canada

Proactive disclosure is often debated as it does not cover all realms of government employees. Elected officials expenses or those not listed directly under the act are not obligated to disclose this information. This has caused scandals both in the House of Commons and the Senate, such as in 2012 in the case of Senator Duffy and in 2016 for Chief of Staff, Katie Telford and Principle Secretary Gerald Butts. [14] Both scandals involved a case where money was not disclosed for an amount that was seen as too expensive, where neither party was required to disclose details of their expense.

Open government and proactive disclosure in Canada is currently under review following recommendations by the Information Commissioner of Canada. [15]

India

In India, the Right to Information Act, has a clause seeking that governments and public institutions should suo moto or pro-actively share information with the public. The act visions that this pro-active disclosure clause should be implemented fully, such that citizens do not have a need to seek information by filing requests under this act. The use of internet, through the institution's web-sites for disseminating information is seen as a method of fulfilling this requirement.

Large organizations and private companies

For large organizations or private companies, transparency and proactive data are often linked as this term indicates the way in which they must be proactive rather than reactive in the spreading of information. Proactive disclosure is also seen as when an organization such as a transnational corporation releases information before it is released by a third party such as the media, which takes away some of the third party's power. [2] This practice has also often been linked to transparency within an organization. In some cases, organizations have been seen as avoiding disclosing information in this way due to negative coverage or to cover up information. [2]

Private companies and large organizations are often held accountable through audits.

Related Research Articles

Secrecy

Secrecy is the practice of hiding information from certain individuals or groups who do not have the "need to know", perhaps while sharing it with other individuals. That which is kept hidden is known as the secret.

Transparency, as used in science, engineering, business, the humanities and in other social contexts, is operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed. Transparency implies openness, communication, and accountability.

The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat is the administrative branch of the Treasury Board of Canada and a central agency of the Government of Canada. The role of the Secretariat is to support the Treasury Board and to provide advice to Treasury Board members in the management and administration of the government.


A privacy policy is a statement or legal document that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses, and manages a customer or client's data. Personal information can be anything that can be used to identify an individual, not limited to the person's name, address, date of birth, marital status, contact information, ID issue, and expiry date, financial records, credit information, medical history, where one travels, and intentions to acquire goods and services. In the case of a business, it is often a statement that declares a party's policy on how it collects, stores, and releases personal information it collects. It informs the client what specific information is collected, and whether it is kept confidential, shared with partners, or sold to other firms or enterprises. Privacy policies typically represent a broader, more generalized treatment, as opposed to data use statements, which tend to be more detailed and specific.

The Treasury Boardof Canada is the Cabinet committee of the Privy Council of Canada which oversees the spending and operation of the Government of Canada and is the principal employer of the core public service. The committee is supported by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, its administrative branch and a department within the government itself.

<i>Federal Accountability Act</i>

The Federal Accountability Act is a statute introduced as Bill C-2 in the first session of the 39th Canadian Parliament on April 11, 2006, by the President of the Treasury Board, John Baird. The aim was to reduce the opportunity to exert influence with money by banning corporate, union, and large personal political donations; five-year lobbying ban on former ministers, their aides, and senior public servants; providing protection for whistleblowers; and enhancing the power of the Auditor General to follow the money spent by the government.

<i>Access to Information Act</i>

The Access to Information Act or Information Act is a Canadian Act providing the right of access to information under the control of a federal government institution. As of 2020, the Act allowed "people who pay $5 to request an array of federal files". Paragraph 2. (1) of the Act ("Purpose") declares that government information should be available to the public, but with necessary exceptions to the right of access that should be limited and specific, and that decisions on the disclosure of government information should be reviewed independently of government. Later paragraphs assign responsibility for this review to an Information Commissioner, who reports directly to parliament rather than the government in power. However, the Act provides the commissioner the power only to recommend rather than compel the release of requested information that the commissioner judges to be not subject to any exception specified in the Act.

The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada is the national financial intelligence agency of Canada. FINTRAC was established in 2000 under the Proceeds of Crime Act to facilitate detection and investigation of money laundering, FINTRAC's mandate was expanded in December 2001 following amendments to the Proceeds of Crime Act to also disclose financial intelligence to other Canadian intelligence and law enforcement agencies with respect to suspected terrorist financing. FINTRAC's mandate was further expanded in 2006 under Bill C-25 to enhance the client identification, record-keeping and reporting measures, established a registration regime for money services businesses and foreign exchange dealers, and created new offences for not registering.

Canadian privacy law is derived from the common law, statutes of the Parliament of Canada and the various provincial legislatures, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Perhaps ironically, Canada's legal conceptualization of privacy, along with most modern legal Western conceptions of privacy, can be traced back to Warren and Brandeis’s "The Right to Privacy" published in the Harvard Law Review in 1890, Holvast states "Almost all authors on privacy start the discussion with the famous article 'The Right to Privacy' of Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis".

Parliamentary Budget Officer Canadian government accountability agency

The Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer is an office of the Parliament of Canada which provides independent, authoritative and non-partisan but ideologically conservative financial and economic analysis. The office is led by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, an independent officer who supports parliamentarians in carrying out their constitutional roles of scrutinizing the raising and spending of public monies and generally overseeing the government's activities.

Open data in Canada describes the capacity for the Canadian Federal Government and other levels of government in Canada to provide online access to data collected and created by governments in a standards-compliant Web 2.0 way. Open data requires that machine-readable should be made openly available, simple to access, and convenient to reuse. As of 2016, Canada was ranked 2nd in the world for publishing open data by the World Wide Web Foundation's Open Data Barometer. But as of July 2018, Canada was ranked 7th alongside Norway

The Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of Canada is one of the Independent Oversight Offices created as part of the Canadian Federal Accountability Act. The Office investigates wrongdoing in the federal public sector and helps protect whistleblowers, and those who participate in investigations, from reprisal. Joe Friday is the current Commissioner, named on March 27, 2015.

Corruption in Canada Institutional corruption in the country of Canada

Transparency International's 2019 Corruption Perception Index ranks Canada as the 12th least corrupt nation out of 180 countries, a drop from 9th in 2016. However, in recent years corruption has been an increasingly large problem in government, industry and non-governmental organizations. For instance, in 2013, the World Bank blacklisted SNC-Lavalin and its subsidiaries from "bidding on its global projects under its fraud and corruption policy" due to the Padma Bridge scandal. Canada also ranks at the bottom of the bribery-fighting rankings, "with little or no enforcement of anti-bribery measures". The 2014 Ernst & Young global fraud survey found that "twenty percent of Canadian executives believe bribery and corruption are widespread in this country". According to a study by the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan, "a large proportion of Canadians see their politicians and their institutions as fundamentally corrupt".

Freedom of information in Canada describes the capacity for the Canadian Government to provide timely and accurate access to internal data concerning government services. Each province and territory in Canada has its own access to freedom of information legislation.

Open philanthropy is the doctrine which holds that the programming, operations, governance, effectiveness, and efficiency of nonprofit organizations should be open and visible by the public, donors, and especially, stakeholders in those nonprofits.

Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014

The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 is a law that aims to make information on federal expenditures more easily accessible and transparent. The law requires the U.S. Department of the Treasury to establish common standards for financial data provided by all government agencies and to expand the amount of data that agencies must provide to the government website, USASpending. The goal of the law is to improve the ability of Americans to track and understand how the government is spending their tax dollars.

Civic Openness in Negotiations (COIN) is a set of Collective Bargaining rules involving government agencies and public labor unions intended to ensure transparency and accountability. The process allows for independent fiscal analysis and public scrutiny with a goal of reducing conflicts of interest, accounting for the full cost of agreements, ensuring adequate board review of contracts, and reducing long-term unfunded liabilities and unplanned expense.

Access to public information and freedom of information (FOI) refer to the right of access to information held by public bodies also known as "right to know". Access to public information is considered of fundamental importance for the effective functioning of democratic systems, as it enhances governments' and public officials' accountability, boosting people participation and allowing their informed participation into public life. The fundamental premise of the right of access to public information is that the information held by governmental institutions is in principle public and may be concealed only on the basis of legitimate reasons which should be detailed in the law.

Open by Default, as widely used in the contexts of Open Government and Open Data, is the principle in which government makes its data accessible to the public by default, unless there is a sufficient justification to explain that greater public interest may be at stake, as a result of disclosure. Since the principle empowers the public's right to know and capacity to oversee government activities, it is closely associated with government transparency, civic engagement, and e-governance in organizing public life. In many cases, the principle is accompanied with the technological commitment to create "metadata standardization for all datasets, publication of a machine-readable data catalogue or inventory of both released and to-be released datasets ... (and) use of open licenses."

The Vulnerabilities Equities Process (VEP) is a process used by the U.S. federal government to determine on a case-by-case basis how it should treat zero-day computer security vulnerabilities; whether to disclose them to the public to help improve general computer security, or to keep them secret for offensive use against the government's adversaries.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Darbishire, Helen. "Proactive Transparency: The future of the right to information?" (PDF). Access to Information Program.
  2. 1 2 3 Arpan, Laura M.; Roskos-Ewoldsen, David R. "Stealing thunder: Analysis of the effects of proactive disclosure of crisis information". Public Relations Review. 31.
  3. ↑ Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada. "Proactive Disclosure". Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada. Retrieved 19 October 2016.
  4. ↑ Brownlee, Jamie; Walby, Kevin (2015). Access to information and social justice : critical research strategies for journalists, scholars, and activists. Winnipeg, Manitoba: ARP Books.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "Current Publications: Information and communications: Government 2.0 and Access to Information: 1. Recent Developments in Proactive Disclosure and Open Data in Canada (2010-14-E)". www.lop.parl.gc.ca. Retrieved 2016-10-19.
  6. 1 2 3 Branch, Government of Canada, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Communications. "Disclosure of Position Reclassifications". www.cic.gc.ca. Retrieved 2016-10-20.
  7. 1 2 3 "Third Biennial Plan to the Open Government Partnership (2016-2018)" (PDF). Third Biennial Plan to the Open Government Partnership (2016-2018).
  8. 1 2 3 "Current Publications: Information and communications: Government 2.0 and Access to Information: 1. Recent Developments in Proactive Disclosure and Open Data in Canada (2010-14-E)". www.lop.parl.gc.ca. Retrieved 2016-11-28.
  9. ↑ Canada, Polar Knowledge. "Proactive Disclosure - Canada.ca". www.canada.ca. Retrieved 2016-11-28.
  10. ↑ Disclosure, Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada, Secretariat, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, Proactive. "Disclosure of Travel and Hospitality Expenses". www.tbs-sct.gc.ca. Retrieved 2016-10-20.
  11. ↑ Council, Government of Canada, National Joint. "Travel Directive". www.njc-cnm.gc.ca. Retrieved 2016-10-20.
  12. ↑ Disclosure, Government of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada, Secretariat, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, Proactive. "Disclosure of Contracts Over $10,000 - Overview". www.tbs-sct.gc.ca. Retrieved 2016-10-20.
  13. ↑ Secretariat, Treasury Board of Canada (2008-12-16). "Contracting Policy" . Retrieved 2016-10-20.
  14. ↑ "Top Trudeau aides Butts, Telford expensed over $200,000 for moving homes". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2016-11-29.
  15. ↑ "Appearance: Proactive Disclosure". www.oic-ci.gc.ca. Retrieved 2016-11-29.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.