Media role in countering culture of public service secrecy stressed

The importance of the media in bringing information into the public domain has been underlined by Information Commissioner. Following publication of his first annual report, Mr Kevin Murphy said the media also had a primary role in ensuring effective use of the new Freedom of Information Act.

It would not be possible to change a culture of secrecy in the public service overnight, he said, as the Official Secrets Act was ingrained in many civil servants. Secrecy, Mr Murphy added, was seen by many as "ensuring less argument about the merits of things", while freedom of information was often seen as leading to less efficiency.

Public bodies were concerned about what would be done with their information, he said yesterday. There was a fear that it would be misinterpreted or "used to slow-up things". While the public service, in general, still had not developed a new mind-set, there were indications of change, such as improvements in personnel management.

"Changing from a culture of secrecy to one of openness was never going to be easy. It will only happen when public bodies start from the premise that they have a responsibility to inform the public to the greatest possible extent," he stated in his report.

The Act had been described as heralding "the end of the culture of public service secrecy" and a "radical departure into a brave new world of public service openness and transparency". But Mr Murphy said it was still too early to say whether such high hopes would be realised in practice. It would, nonetheless, be an important tool for the citizen to gain access to a wide range of information.

He did not wish to suggest any category of "requester" was more important than another but he singled out the media's role. In the longer term the Act had a significant role to play in encouraging transparency and greater democratic participation. "These benefits can, however, be realised only in a limited way as a result of individual requests by private citizens. In a modern democracy, one vital means of bringing information about the business of Government into the public domain is through the media."

The commissioner said that despite the need for a public service culture change, his office had received full co-operation from the public bodies that are subject to the terms of the Act - with the possible exception of one case - even if some disagreed with his verdicts.

Two of these will be the subject of High Court cases. One relates to a tenderer who did not wish details of a successful tender for the supply of motor vehicles to the Department of Defence to be disclosed, and the other to the Department of Agriculture's insistence that personal information about an individual should not be released.

Not enough attention was being paid to the human rights dimension of access to information, Mr Murphy said. He also would be concerned if the cost of processing a query was used to inhibit access to information.

The report covers an eight-month period for the civil service and related bodies (from the cut-off date of April 21st to December 31st last year), and a two-month period for local authorities up to the end of December 1998. A total of 3,286 requests were dealt with by these organisations.

The commissioner accepted 179 cases for review from individual requesters, of which 148 related to decisions to refuse access to information sought.

Mr Murphy has completed 57 reviews, and in 32 cases he either varied the public body's decision or effected a settlement between the requester and public body. There was a 50:50 divide between personal information and "official information" requests.