By Toby McIntosh
The United Nations will soon be asking 209 nations to complete a questionnaire about access to information that has been significantly diminished from the pilot version.
The lighter version will gather less data on the performance of major national agencies, asking for particulars on only two agencies instead of nine. In addition, more than a dozen questions have been dropped, both general and specific, with only a handful added.
Unexpectedly, the UN has substantially expanded the project’s scope by seeking information about access to information at the state and provincial level. Subnational bodies were not covered in the pilot.
The new survey form was developed primarily by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), building on the pilot created by another UNESCO division. The new version was not subjected to a consultation round with experts, as was the pilot survey.
The overall goal of the survey is to measure progress toward fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goal (16.10) which asks that governments: “Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements.” The associated “indicator” (SDG 16.10.2) seeks to measure the adoption and implementation of access to information (ATI) regimes.
The UN survey will serve as the official baseline for judging progress on implementing SDG 16.10, although some non-governmental organizations are doing their own parallel assessments going into more detail.
In the coming days, 209 governments will receive the UN questionnaire. The deadline for submitting data is March, 20, 2020. The resulting data is expected to be released in June, UIS said in its announcement in which Director Silvia Montoya noted that this is a “very difficult to measure indicator.” A report will be submitted in October to the Intergovernmental Council of UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC).
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Many Basics Requested
Basic questions are containing in both the old and the new surveys.
These concern how many requests for information are submitted, how many are fulfilled, and how long it takes to get answers. Similar data about the appeals process is also requested.
The survey seeks to gather basic information on national ATI laws and on the entities with ATI oversight responsibilities. Governments are asked for a combined total for the budgets and staffing of all “ATI bodies.” This apparently includes the ATI activities of all agencies covered by the law, though this information will not be disaggregated. Such accounting is complicated and this level of reporting detail is rare among countries with ATI laws.
Development of the pilot survey was handled for several years by the Communication and Information Sector of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). But the second survey was managed by UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics (UIS). The pilot was conducted in early 2019.
Honing the survey based on experience with the pilot was expected. An assessment report as prepared, officials said. However, the draft UIS survey appears not have been shown to ATI experts or the public, a process that was followed for the pilot.
The new survey, like the first, is in two parts. One is for oversight agencies, which go by various names and may handle appeals. (English, French, Spanish) The second survey is for specific government institutions, key substantive ministries. (English, French, Spanish) There’s an instruction manual, too. (English, French, Spanish)
UIS officials provided answers to EYE’s questions on the many alterations.
Overall, UIS said:
The changes were made in an effort to improve the clarity of the questions being asked and the terms/concepts used. The design is intended to collect the relevant information in the most efficient and precise manner possible while reducing response burden (time to complete) and facilitate analysis.
Less Agency Data Requested
However, several changes are substantive.
One major change will reduce the amount of information collected on specific government agencies.
For the pilot survey, governments were asked to supply data on 10 “public authorities.”
These bodies were asked for information such as the number of requests and response rate. It was “mandatory” to include the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Environment and “City Council of the Capital,” with the other seven to be chosen by the government.
But in the final survey data is requested only for the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Environment and “the Mayor’s Office of the capital city” (sic).
Setting aside the inclusion of the capitol city, this means that the number of national bodies included is cut from nine to two.
Subnational Bodies Added
The final survey was expanded to cover “regional/state/provincial” bodies.
Asked why, UIS replied, “Data by level of government is collected as the ATI mechanism may apply at this level, especially in federated states. This disaggregated level of data is not applicable in every country.”
The UIS said it expects to receive one reply, from the national government.
Additions on Reasons for Denials
The new survey goes beyond the pilot by asking about the reasons for denying ATI requests (Section 2 No. 19).
Denials are segregated into “partial disclosure” and non-disclosure,” and the reasons question is posed for both category.
The three listed rationales for nondisclosure are common ones: national security, privacy and commercial confidentiality. Also there is “other.”
“Asking for ‘other’ is used in order to account for possible responses in addition to those noted,” UIS said.
The new national form (Section 2, No. 20) asks for more specificity about request response times, asking for data grouped in three time blocks, beginning with 0-30 days.
This sort of breakdown is rare in national reporting. The UIS commented: “Data availability will vary between countries. If a country is unable to calculate the figure now, it may be able to do so in future.”
Another new feature of the survey is a question on the gender breakdown of ATI staffers at the national and regional levels.
“One objective of the SDGs is to collect data on gender for all indicators where appropriate,” the UIS said.
UIS seeks a break-out for “capital expenditure,” explaining, “Disaggregated data provide a basis for enhanced analysis.” ATI operations typically have very limited capital expenditures.
Specific Questions Dropped
At least a dozen questions from the pilot have been dropped, according to an EYE tally confirmed by UIS.
Deleted items include:
- Whether an ATI instructional guide was disseminated and particulars
- Whether public awareness efforts were undertaken and particulars
- Whether awareness polling was conducted
- Whether common minimum standards for records management have been set
- A section on perceived challenges and future goals
- A questionnaire on materials proactively disclosed
UIS confirmed the changes, commenting, “As with all pilots, we chose what was relevant for the final survey.”
The survey directed at the individual ministries retains some of the pilot’s specific inquiries, but drops others.
Common to both are questions on whether the agency releases:
- Annual reports
- Salary scales
- Institutional operation manuals
- Structural information
- Info on how to make an ATI request
- Budget
- Financial expenditure reports
- Audit reports
- contract information.
Dropped are questions on disclosure of:
- Policy reports
- Vitae of senior public servants
- Administrative data sets
- Annual ATI report
New (or modified) questions are about:
- List of records held by agency
- Guidelines on how to make an ATI request
- A description of agency functions
- “Ministers agendas, minutes, and papers” now narrowed to say “Ministers’ appointment logs.”
- “Spending of the head of your institution.”
Clarity Issues
Some of the revisions may reduce the completeness of the information.
For example. the pilot survey’s checklist for the legal authorities governing ATI included a checkbox for a “Constitutional provision.”
Question 6 in Section I of the new form, however, asks whether the country has “a constitutional, statutory and/or other legal guarantee for public access to information.” There is no specific question on the Constitutional provision.
Question No. 7, on national legal instruments, seems to ask two things, first whether there’s a right to ask for and receive information and second, if the “rule” (odd word choice) obligates public bodies “to provide information (so including proactively).” The phrasing seems unlikely to provide clear answers on fails to cleanly determine if there is a proactive disclosure obligations
These are additions to the survey, UIS said, saying that “the survey instruction manual has a definition of proactive disclosure to aid respondents.”
Another set of questions (Section 4 No. 20) asks respondents to rate their institution’s “ability to perform certain functions on a five-point scale.
For example, was “the processing of ATI Appeals,” at one end “very easy” or at the other end “very difficult.”
There are a few slight, if inconsequential, alterations, such as referring to “access to information” instead of “right to information.”
Fewer Years Covered?
The pilot survey aimed to collect data for three years (2015-2017), but the new survey asks for data one year, 2018.
The guide for the survey says this survey will be conducted annually, but it may be less frequent, a UNESCO official said, perhaps every two years.
Pilot Report Issued in 2019
UNESCO in August of 2019 issued an overview report on its SDG Indicator 16.10.2 data collection exercise, Highlights from the 2019 UNESCO Monitoring and Reporting of SDG Indicator 16.10.2 – Access to Information: Powering Sustainable Development with Access to Information.
The data collection effort, done earlier in 2019, covering 43 Voluntary National Review (VNR) countries. The UNESCO methodology involved two surveys, one focusing on the work of central oversight bodies and one focusing on individual public authorities. The data on the participating countries has not been released.
“One of the more dramatic outcomes was the extremely positive results given by individual public authorities regarding the processing of requests, including an 81% rate of providing information in response to requests and an 80% rate of responding to requests within the initial time limits,” said Toby Mendel, Executive Director of the Centre for Law and Democracy, the Canadian-based organization that administered the survey. But he noted that the high numbers “do not correspond to the results of independent requesting exercises, suggesting that better data collection by public authorities may be needed.”
