Government Information in Canada/Information gouvernementale au
Canada, Volume 3, number/numéro 2 (fall/automne
1996)
Department of Political Studies University of Saskatchewan
The essence of the issue being addressed in this session can be simply
stated: it is to ensure full access for teaching and academic purposes to
government data sets and information at affordable costs.
For the academic community, prohibitively high costs for
information retrieval of government documents and data sets means
precisely what the term says: high costs effectively prohibit
academic freedom--that is, the freedom to pursue without arbitarary
constraint subjects of intrinsic scientific value.
Fortunately for the academic community, the Data Liberation Initiative
(DLI) is now nicely underway, albeit with a somewhat uncertain future as a
five-year pilot project. Jointly sponsored as it is by a variety of
agencies and research libraries, the DLI is a bold and sensible
undertaking. It is to be hoped that it works, that its goals are achieved,
and that it is able to prove to a sometimes sceptical government apparatus
the worth of university-based research. More to the point, it is to be
hoped that if it truly does amount to a success story (and all indications
point in that direction), its funding and its future are both assured well
beyond its current five-year life.
I should note as well that the DLI stands as proof of the effectiveness
of academic lobbying. Were it not for the role played by the then Social
Science Federation of Canada (SSFC) in pursuing the issue with such vigour, it
is an open question whether we would today have the DLI or anything even
approximating it. I commend to you the report the Federation produced in
support of its lobbying and negotiating efforts. We do not often have occasion
to point to success stories in making our case with government, but the
establishment of the DLI stands as a happy exception to the all-too-usual
pattern of failures.
The strengths of the DLI speak for themselves and need no elaboration.
There are, however, some aspects of the initiative that bear directly on
the larger matter of ensuring guaranteed access for the university
community (and, for that matter, the larger public) to some of the
essential tools for scientific research. I wish to comment on these and to
use the occasion to raise a further concern I have about a related issue
of confidentiality of information available through electronically-based
data sets.
The immediate issues that this initiative raises in my mind center
around four concerns. They all derive from the fundamental proposition
that government has an obligation to inform the public of its
activities and the public has a right to be informed of those
activities.
I raise these in no particular order of priority:
Let me close with a brief expression of concern about confidentiality
of information available on electronically-generated data sets. I
understand a proposal currently making its way from Elections Canada to
the federal cabinet pertains directly to the possibility of replacing the
current enumeration and revision process of compiling voters' lists with a
so-called "permanent" list of electors. Quite apart from the issue of
whether or not this would be a cost-effective move that, in the end, would
produce a more complete list of voters, it strikes me from what I have
able to learn so far that one side of the proposal could prove
problematic.
That has to do with the lists that themselves would be used to provide
names, ages and addresses of Canadian citizens eligible to vote. Some
Ottawa sources suggest that the federal voters' lists might be kept
up-to-date on a continuous basis (and therefore the mistaken rubric
"permanent") by accessing other data sets. These are said to include tax
records, health cards and drivers' licences. I would hope not, for people
enter those registries in order to comply with tax laws or obtain medical
and hospital benefits or drive a car--not to vote.
The information available to one government can easily be transmitted
to another electronically; my fear stems from the fact that in this
particular instance there is no demonstrable relationship between the
information provided to one agency and the needs of the another. Invasion
of privacy (a concern the Privacy Commissioner and Revenue Canada would no
doubt share when they examine this issue) is a distinct possibility with
electronically available information. There is in my mind a certain
parallel here of which we must remind ourselves. Just as the researcher
(university-based or not) must enjoy the freedom to pursue without
arbitrary constraint subjects of intrinsic scientific value, so too must
the public enjoy the freedom to know that information provided to one
government department is not to be shared heedlessly with another. Both
parts of that equation rest, I would hope, on a certain irrefutable logic.
Courtney, John C., "Comments on 'Data Liberation and Academic Freedom,'"
Government Information in Canada/Information gouvernementale au
Canada 3, no. 2 (1996).
[http://www.usask.ca/library/gic/v3n2/courtney/courtney.html]
[2] This article is based on a paper presented at
"Academic Freedom: The History and Future of a Defining Idea," September 21, 1996, in
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. [4] An expression used in Science Bulletin 6 (December 1994): 7.
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