Ontario Ombudsman calls for open government

Ontario Ombudsman André Marin has seen his share of secrecy as the head of the agency that oversees the provincial government. And with the rise of information technology, he says, there’s an opportunity and a responsibility for government to be more open and transparent.

“Embracing open government is like a root canal at the dentist, it fixes a problem in the long run, but it’s not obvious when you’re getting the procedure done,” Marin says to a packed room at Yorkville bar The Pilot as part of the Third Tuesday Toronto meetup.

The rise of social media over the past few years has helped redefine what’s public and private. Organizations and even individuals that choose not to share information can be treated with suspicion, or simply ignored.

Inevitably, the ability to quickly send messages and updates publicly has put pressure on public institutions to share more information. Governments can no longer use the excuse that time and expense stand in the way of keeping the public informed of its actions.

The government has clearly struggled to cope with this rapid change. When Marin started as Ombudsman of Ontario in 2005, he says, the department did not engage the public in the way it does now -- it was frowned upon. “It was astounding to me. We’re not running a highly secure agency like the CIA, we were operating an ombudsman’s office.”

The office’s public appearances were basically limited to once per year when the office would release its annual report at a press conference. Marin says the office feared exposure because of the harm it could do to its reputation. “You’re opening yourself up to accusations, of grandstanding, of wanting to attract attention to yourself.”

Expectations are changing, however. Posting a dozen tweets per day is no longer simply about attracting attention; it’s about staying in the conversation, and showing that you’re listening and responding to the public. But government is not quick to adapt.

Among other things, government agencies that want to communicate more are working against a culture of fear developed over a long period of time surrounding the release of information, which creates, in turn, a culture of secrecy.

OPSpedia head Tom Sommerville spoke about this at Toronto’s GovCamp earlier this month. Scandals like eHealth Ontario, which Ontario Auditor General Jim McCarter found had wasted $1 billion in public money, loom large in the minds of public employees. “That definitely has a chilling effect on our behaviour in government,” Sommerville said.

Far from a free flow of information, Marin says information is typically released only when it doesn’t “fit in within the exceptions”.

“The reaction of many government agencies is one of power protectionism,” he says. “It’s not pro-active, it’s very much reactive.”

This pervasive “closed government” mindset is clearly demonstrated in Ontario in the recently released ombudsman report, “Caught in the Act”, on the handling of the G20 summit held last year in Toronto.

“The government had passed a regulation that revived a 1939 piece of legislation called the public works protection Act, which gave powers to the police to arbitrarily detain and arrest anyone who failed to properly identify themselves. This regulation was kept secret intentionally.”

No one outside of an inner circle, not even the Canadian Civil Liberties Association -- a well-heeled group of lawyers and advocates - had any idea of the existence of this regulation, he says. “How are citizens supposed to be law-abiding when they don’t know that the rules of the game have been changed?”

The G20 report, and many others, are examples of “the lack of engagement and communication and information between citizens and government.”

Marin has his work cutout for him, and it’s hard to know where to begin. “I’m not absolutely sure of the answers about open government, and [how] to get there, I just know that we need to get there, and we need to get there fast.”

To his credit, Marin now has posted more than 2,200 tweets, and has more than 4,000 Twitter followers. He tweeted just prior to Tuesday night’s event: “Lots of energy in the room tonight. Convinced more than ever that Open Gov't naysayers r wrong.”

Marin has his work cut out for him to help open government catch on in Ontario. Let’s hope he can prove the naysayers wrong.