Response to Bruce Morton 1

Comments on Bruce Morton's "Canadian Federal Government Policy and Canada's Electronic Information Industry"

Bruce Morton has produced an excellent overview of the policy situation which existed at the federal level in Canada between 1970 and 1994 in regard to the development of an electronic information industry. His conclusions about how government and the industry might pursue an improved public policy process to enable more rapid and substantive development of electronic information providers across the country, particularly a more focused policy centre in Ottawa that is not dispersed among several bureaucratic players, is well taken. However, the article deals with broader issues of information policy which impacted on the relationship between the electronic information industry and the Canadian federal government and, in his judgment, handicapped the development of a more vibrant electronic information sector. It is to this wider area that I wish to direct several comments which, hopefully, will add some useful perspectives on Dr. Morton's fine work.

Lack of Leadership

Dr. Morton's analysis is almost entirely focused on the bureaucratic struggles within Ottawa. There is an easy assumption that if the bureaucrats can get it right then all will be well and the electronic information industry could have prospered for three decades and will prosper in the future. The unfortunate fact is that for three decades, excepting a brief period in the later 1970s when political debate occurred over the proper form of freedom of information legislation, there has been a woeful lack of political leadership over information issues. Parliamentary committees have rarely debated the proper course for federal or national information policy and no government, except for the Trudeau government's short infatuation with "open government" and "participatory democracy", has really had an information policy.

This is perhaps unfair since most governments have concerned themselves with communication and broadcast policy, but this has emphasized technology, tariffs, and access to the technology and not how information will be disseminated. There is a huge bureaucracy for regulating the former and, even as we deal with the emerging issues of the Information Age, pitifully little attention to the latter. There is pressing need for political leadership and guidance on information, as opposed to technology, policy.

Changing Nature of Government

An aspect missing from Dr. Morton's analysis is the profound change in the nature of most governments in Canada since the mid-1980s. The push to restrict the role of government and deregulate the economy has been exceptionally strong. This has been accompanied within government by a strong desire to eliminate rules and regulations from the centre in favour of letting the manager manage.

The push to deregulation and reducing what government does to essential things is driven by the desire to constrain and reduce government expenditures. To a certain extent, this helped the electronic publishing industry because it made government institutions more amenable to contracting out information dissemination activities. But, as well, it made support for the industry through regulation more difficult to achieve. The impact on government institutions was a reduction in human and financial resources and, often, efforts to preserve existing approaches rather than a full embracing of the winds of change. This was complicated by the decision to treat new information policy in the same way as long extant public policy. Thus, new information policies were terse and contracted, with little implementation support, when their newness and crucial importance to the efforts of renewing government services demanded a much more vigorous approach.

Technology vs. Information Management

There has been a tendency for the federal government, as with the private sector, to manage technology, and not the information component of its enterprise. This is not to play down the importance of managing the technology component of public institutions or the pressing need for the federal government to have compatible technology infrastructure across its operations.

But all too often, technology was managed to the absolute neglect of the information component. It has been, and, to some extent, remains easier to invest in and regulate technology than to deal with the vital public policy surrounding the management and dissemination of government information. From 1985 on, the federal government had a fairly sophisticated information management policy but few of the implementation structures to bring it to fruition. Bureaucratic attention was focused internally on managing the technology and externally on appropriate regulatory structures for information technology. This situation was exacerbated by a management philosophy which promoted deregulation and less direction from central agencies. It remains to be seen whether there is a political and bureaucratic will to promote a new information policy and make it an effective arm of public administration at the federal level. Certainly, such an approach is being advocated, even by those who once thought technology management was the solution to all problems, and is part of the vital core of renewed government in other countries. A solid policy and implementation base is available to the federal government but the question remains whether or not it will be picked up as part of the renewal of government activities which must inevitably grow out of the fiscal restraint measures which currently preoccupy the federal government.

Public Interest in Government Information

Professor Morton does not pay much attention to the growing public interest in Canadian government information. He makes the assumption that federal information was there for the taking and could have been turned over to a private sector electronic information industry without much difficulty. But many government departments did not have the view of Statistics Canada that government information should be treated as a commodity. They saw a public interest in collecting information and disseminating it at low cost. Some did not understand the dynamics behind the idea of tradable information and others rejected the idea outright.

At the same time, especially toward the end of the period under discussion by Dr. Morton, there was an increasing public expression of the principle that government information should not be turned over willy-nilly to private vendors to be sold to the public at what were viewed as high prices, which would deny access to large parts of the population. There was also a feeling that older systems, such as the Depository Services Program, needed to be modernized as a safety net for the new electronic world. These views were very prevalent at the Information Summit which Dr. Morton references and culminated in creation of the Coalition for Public Information.

These factors complicated the information policy spectrum and led to some of the suggestions for achieving new directions and better balance within information policy approaches which Dr. Morton too facilely dismisses as government rhetoric. At the same time, the electronic information industry, which concentrated its fire on the issue of Crown copyright, seemed incapable of suggesting ways of assuring that the public interest in government information was represented in their dealings with departments. The industry wanted controls over the use of government information lifted but had no suggestions as to how the wider public interest might be measured and dealt with. This led to a very difficult policy environment where progress was extremely difficult, especially in tough fiscal circumstances.

I hope these points provide some additional perspectives on Dr. Morton's work, which, on the whole, provides an excellent overview. There remains in 1995 a pressing need for focused federal information policy and, perhaps most importantly, implementation direction and structures, which can deal with the immense challenges of the Information Age. That policy and implementation structure needs to express

1. The public interest in government information through
   • a statement of universal access;
   • an expression of what that public interest means;
   • assurance of public access rights;
   • facilitation of access to information on an equitable basis;
   • revamping of public safety nets;
   • attention to electronic services and means of increased participatory democracy;
   • protection of privacy in technological applications;
2. Sophisticated management of information holdings;
3. Establishment of appropriate information networks;
4. Establishment of modern mandates for an information management framework;
5. Definition and enabling information dissemination channels outside government;
6. Establishing and nurturing a true information management discipline within federal public administration, focused on developing and maintaining management structures for "information" as opposed to "technology".

Each of these headings poses major challenges which need to be discussed and solved through a consultative process for policy development and implementation. Failure to do so will replicate the unsatisfactory ad hoc arrangements of the past, which Dr. Morton has exposed, and cripple the federal government in its attempts to deal with the issues of the Information Age.

Notes

Robert Peter Gillis, "Response to Bruce Morton," Government Information in Canada/Information gouvernementale au Canada, Vol. 2, no. 3.6 (winter/hiver 1996).

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Robert Peter Gillis,
Consultant
Victoria, British Columbia