Information watchdog criticizes government

Calls for in-depth training on FOIP

EDMONTON Alberta’s information and privacy commissioner wants to see more in-depth training for government workers who deal with freedom-of-informationand-privacy (FOIP) requests.

The office also wants the government to close a loophole that allows some public bodies to avoid being subject to the Alberta government’s records-management program.

The recommendations are contained in two new reports, released Tuesday.

The first report, written by senior information and privacy manager Chris Stinner, examined the government’s FOIP-request tracking system.

The investigation was launched following a scathing report into the destruction of records after the 2015 provincial election, which found nobody was in charge as shredders whirred in the days after the Tory government was toppled.

When that report was released, someone contacted the commissioner worried that misunderstandings over the FOIP Act may have affected responses he received to previous access requests.

Commissioner Jill Clayton directed her office to look into whether the government makes every reasonable effort to assist applicants and to respond to each applicant openly, accurately and completely.

For the most part, they do, Stinner found, but he recommended that record practices rely less on the knowledge and experience of individual FOIP co-ordinators.

He would also like to see a standard, governmentwide form that tracks searches, so records can be “consistently and systematically” identified and located.

“A lack of documentation could erode trust in the integrity of the access request response process, leading applicants to question whether public bodies properly discharged their duties,” he wrote.

The office’s second investigation centred on two access-to-information requests made to the Balancing Pool in 2016 and 2017.

After receiving their responses, both applicants wrote to the commissioner concerned about how their requests were processed, and about an instruction in an email to delete a draft briefing note.

The email in question included an attachment to the draft briefing note and the body of the email read, “Sensitive and transitory. Please delete.” It was sent from an employee of Alberta Energy to Balancing Pool employees.

In her report, senior information and privacy manager Elaine LeBuke found the note was a transitory record — which are allowed to be deleted — but recommended officials and employees of all public bodies be trained on recordsmanagement policies, including record retention and destruction, and the difference between official and transitory records.

She also recommended Clayton write to the minister of Service Alberta to highlight inconsistencies around which bodies are subject to the records-management program.