Let me begin by saying that I am grateful for the respondents'
appreciation of my efforts to better understand Canadian government
information policy.
I appreciate Peter Gillis' insider's eye-view of the changing
nature of government in Canada during the mid-1980s. However, in
general terms, these changes were not unique to Canada. Indeed, as
they pertain to federal information policy, they were modelled on
initiatives undertaken by the Reagan administration in the United
States, particularly principles embodied in the U.S. Office of
Management and Budget's 1985 Circular A-130. The underpinning of
A-130 as well as its progeny, Chapter 480 of the Canadian Treasury
Board's Administrative Policy Manual, was the view that government
information was a corporate resource, deserving of and in need of
management. In an era of fiscal restraint, information was seen at
the policy level to be inherently valuable -- not in philosophical
terms, but rather in economical terms. But, as Gillis points out,
little of substance has been done by the government to implement
practices that have given the government a stream of revenue from
its valuable information.
Gillis and Morton agree that there has been a lack of
leadership at the federal level in Canada when it comes to matters
of information policy. Although much of my work has focused of the
bureaucracy that struggles to deal with issues of information
policy in a policy vacuum, it is a bureaucracy of much consequence.
Canada's bureaucracy is a professional service that is by and large
protected from upheavals due to shifts in political power.
Consequently, this bureaucracy is influential in policy formulation
as well as policy implementation. Someone in Canada needs to
recognize, as Gillis suggests, that serious attention needs to be
paid (in the way of cogent and coherent policy) to the information
that will flow through Canada's infostructure.
Again, I believe that Gillis, Katz, and I agree that the
Canadian information industry has been neither single-minded nor
coordinated in trying to persuade or work with the government to
bring government information into the private sector. However,
even if the private sector had been more adept at approaching the
government, satisfactory results would have been unlikely because
there was no central point of contact for the government's array of
electronic information resources.
Nilsen and Katz both draw attention to my discussion of
Canadian cultural nationalism; a sensitive issue -- no doubt. It
occurred to me while writing the paper that one of two view points
is possible in the matter of Canadian cultural nationalism. One
would be that a non-Canadian (a status to which I cannot help but
plead guilty) cannot possibly understand the essence of Canadian
culture or the depth of feeling that Canadians have about it. The
other plausible way to view the matter is that Canadians are too
close to their culture and the issue of cultural nationalism to
discern objectively its dynamics and effects. I realize that I am
vulnerable to criticism from those who adhere to the former view;
perhaps, this might be offset by an appreciation from those who
will concede a bit of the latter.
In any case, it seems to me that there must be a recognition
that culture -- any culture--is neither encapsulated in the sappiness
of emotion nor the amber of statute. Canadian culture has evolved
and will continue to evolve. Regulation of that evolution will not
stanch the evolution but rather skew it. Culture, particularly in
a democracy, is an amalgam of each citizen's perception of what is
beautiful, ugly, important, unimportant, what is worth having and
what is not, what is worth reading, hearing, viewing, or knowing
and what is not. This collective sense, today, is not what it was
yesterday nor what it will be tomorrow. The influence of the
neighbor to the south may be more influential than, say, the also
very real influences of the Pacific rim and its immigrants to the
Canadian west, or Europeans -- all, however, have helped to form
Canadian culture and will continue to do so in McLuhan's global
village. It is not extracultural temptation from which Canadians
need to be protected, but rather it is their senses, preferences,
predilections that need to be respected.
That is all on a philosophical level. On a practical level, it
seems to me to be a much simpler matter. Canada's is a capitalist
free-market economy; its companies compete in a global free-market
economy. To impose strictures based on cultural nationalism
handicaps its information-related industries, both in terms of
other Canadian companies that are not deemed to be culturally
sensitive and, more importantly, with non-Canadian companies with
which they must compete. It is my belief that much of the
difficulty that the Canadian publishing and information industries
have experienced have resulted from protectionist federal
government policies (inconsistent policies at that) that rather
than giving succor have actually had the opposite effect. In
protecting its cultural industries, Canada handicaps them as
businesses. Any competitive database will naturally strive to
include appropriate Canadian content, regardless of whether
ownership of the database is Canadian or what proportion of content
is Canadian, because Canada and Canadian thought are important.
Canadian content integrated in databases is more marketable in the
larger context than it is segregated in a database limited to
Canadiana. The rest of the world is more likely to want to know
what Canadians (and others) think about a particular topic
(whatever the topic) rather than what they think merely because
they are Canadian.
Katz is quite right in her observation that the federal
government has appeared ignorant that there is enough value in its
information to fuel and industry. To my mind, issues of cost
recovery are a red herring. Government collects data and produces
information not because that is its business. Its business is
governing; to do this it needs information to do its job and to be
held accountable. Therefore, government information is part of the
cost of being a government. The government has been consistently
shortsighted in looking for cost recovery rather than taking the
long view in seeding the private sector to grow an information
industry, the success of which would have positive economic
resonance in peripheral sectors, all of which would eventually
enrich government coffers in personal and corporate tax revenues.
To Katz's observation that there is much detail in the paper
and that this makes the reading difficult, I can only say that we
agree that this is a complex topic and that, indeed, the devil is
in the details.
What continues to strike me and should concern the Canadian
respondents is that very little has changed since the article to
which they are responding was written two years ago. It has been
reported that there were commitments made by representatives of the
federal government (at the Electronic Democracy Conference in
Toronto on January 29, 1996) to release substantial amounts of
information from all agencies within the parameters of Crown
Copyright. Nevertheless, federal policies outlined in the Treasury
Board's Manager's Deskbook3 will make it
very difficult for significant progress to be made. There continues
to be a clear emphasis on information holdings as a corporate
resource, the main purpose of which is to help government conduct
its business. While there is tacit statement of the desirability to
make holdings available for purchase by the public (where
appropriate and there is significant public demand), all fees
except for contracts must be established by legislation either via
the Governor-in-Council or ministerial regulations. This is
clearly a disincentive to bureaucrats to channel their information
outside the government. The policy to charge external users is
based on the premise that those who benefit specifically from
government goods and services should be asked to pay a fair share
of the cost of provision. The idea is to shift the burden from
taxpayers in general to those who benefit most directly. Oddly, the
Treasury Board reasons that this policy will help to reduce the
deficit, when the opposite is more likely the case.
To sum it up in rather crass US-ese --in terms of public and
private-sector access to government electronic government
information, the government must get beyond talking the talk and
begin walking the walk. There is no evidence that this has begun to
happen.
Bruce Morton, "Final Response," Government
Information in Canada/Information gouvernementale au Canada, Vol.
2, no. 3.8 (winter/hiver 1996).
[3] Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada, The
Manager's Deskbook, 4th ed., Ottawa, 1995.
Also available:
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/tb/pubs/md/htmle/mde.html
Notes
[1] May be cited as/On peut citer comme suit:
Bruce Morton, Dean
MSU Libraries
Montana State University
Bozeman, MT 59717-0332 USA
alibm@gemini.oscs.montana.edu
Phone: (406) 994-6518
Fax: (406) 994-6518