Helen Katz: Response to Bruce Morton
Government Information in Canada/Information gouvernementale au Canada, Volume 2, number/numéro 3.7 (winter/hiver 1996)

Response to Bruce Morton 1

Helen Katz, Ontario Ministry of Finance 2


Review of Bruce Morton, "Canadian Federal Government Policy and Canada's Electronic Information Industry"

The abstract to "Canadian Federal Government Policy and Canada's Electronic Information Industry" by Bruce Morton conjures an image of a history of information policy formulation and implementation in Canada. In its place is a detailed look at the issues at play in information policy development in Canada.

There is a tremendous amount of detail in this article, making reading difficult at times. It is more like a working paper or a treatise. With 235 footnotes, the reader has difficulty knowing whether the footnote indicates the source of the information or whether there is additional information to be found in the footnote. This leads to much flipping back and forth when reading the article.

The issues raised by Bruce Morton are complex and reflect the difficulties government has dealing with information policy. While I agree with the issues he has identified, I do not necessarily agree with the conclusions he has reached.

There is the issue of cultural nationalism. Much of Canadian culture is currently protected from foreign ownership. It is feared that Canadian culture would be overrun by culture from the United States. In part, cultural nationalism can be attributed to protecting our culture from that of a foreign country. We see rulings from the Canadian Radio-Telecommunications Commission on the amount of Canadian content on radio and television. However, there is also an element of protecting an industry which might not be able to operate effectively and profitably without such built-in protection.

A second issue surrounds the use of Crown copyright. Contrary to the situation in the United States where government information is in the public domain, Canada has taken the route where government owns the copyright to the information. This stems partly from a government perspective of maintaining control (in a positive sense) and therefore integrity in the product. Of late, though, there have been increasing decisions to use Crown copyright to generate revenue. (As a side note, the United States government has recently begun to charge for information that was previously made available free of charge.)

There is a great philosophical debate over this issue. On one hand, should information generated at taxpayer's expense be subject to additional access fees? On the other hand, what is the purpose of gathering the information? If the purpose is to make informed decisions, then the information is for internal use only. A decision to recoup the costs of producing data (in a print or electronic format) would be acceptable.

The difficult issue of cost-recovery was not fully explored in the article. Bruce Morton discussed the astronomical jump in the cost of Statistics Canada publications. At one time, Statistics Canada publications were priced, but not to the cost-recovery level. When the agency was mandated to recoup costs, the subscription rates soared. Given that Statistics Canada is funded from tax dollars, the debate on cost-recovery should determine which costs are to be recovered. Should costs be recovered only for printing and distribution or should cost-recovery include data collection, production, printing and distribution?

Bruce Morton has highlighted the tensions between government and the information industry. Partially this tension is a result of government not understanding the industry. This is not new in the realm of government-industry relations. There are often misunderstandings of industry (any industry) and its role in the economy. What exacerbates this situation is the new technology which is not only unknown, but also constantly changing. There also appears to be some degree of ignorance on the part of government that there is enough value to information that there could be an industry to provide information.

The information industry is also divided. There is no cohesive voice. Although there is much merit in the argument that government policies and regulations are inconsistent and potentially unfair in making information available to the electronic industry, the industry argument seems to be that industry should make its profit on "free" information.

The private sector does not want the government as a competitor. This is rightly so since the government has far greater resources and does not have a profit motive. On the other hand, the Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) started the CAN/OLE on-line system in 1974. At that time, there were no Canadian commercial database services. These systems needed large mainframe computing power to maintain the information. The systems also needed more customers than were available in Canada in 1974. As the industry has grown and government finances have faltered, the government has rethought its role and has ceased to provide this service.

There are two great influences on the government's role in information policy. The first is that information policy crossed too many department lines -- communications, culture, industry, treasury board (internal management) -- so it was difficult to develop a comprehensive policy. The second is the rapid change in the industry and its various subsectors. A policy would need to take into account the two components of the information -- the content and the delivery mechanism. The government has some control over the information it gathers and can make available to the industry. There is little, if any, control over the massive technological changes over the last twenty years.

Bruce Morton exhaustively examined the Canadian government's role in electronic information policy. This undertaking alone is worthy of praise. Any criticisms I may have are mainly as a result of highly compact written work. I may disagree with some of the conclusions, but definitely not with the issues raised.

All opinions expressed are my own and do not reflect my employer's.


Notes

[1] May be cited as/On peut citer comme suit:

Helen Katz, "Response to Bruce Morton," Government Information in Canada/Information gouvernementale au Canada, Vol. 2, no. 3.7 (winter/hiver 1996)

[2]

Helen Katz
Coordinator
Library Services
Ontario Ministry of Finance


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