In their latest spending estimates, the federal information and privacy commissioners use unusually blunt language to warn that the rapid spread of electronic storage and transmission of information has led to increased demand for their services and more complaints.
At the same time, however, dwindling budgets are making it difficult to fulfill their mandates. "Budget cuts have eroded the Office's resources to the critical point," Privacy Commissioner Bruce Phillips wrote in the 1996-97 estimates, which were released last month. He referred to a "rapidly approaching financial crisis" brought on in part by an "exponential growth in information technology." Information Commissioner John Grace painted a similar story: "The office has gone as far as it can in terms of re-engineering."
In subsequent interviews, both said Canadians can expect longer delays for those seeking access to government information and in processing privacy complaints.
Over the past five years, the budgets of the information and privacy offices have been cut by 10 per cent. But their workload, which unlike most departments is determined solely by public complaints and therefore out of their control, has risen by 50 per cent over the same period.
Last year, the average turn-around time for dealing with complaints about privacy violations grew from 10 to 11 months. Access complaints now take almost four months to process, up from three and a half months in 1994.
As a result, departmental officials guarding the information can expect less interference from the commissioners. Among the biggest problems is the difficulty each office faces keeping tabs on the latest trends in government IT management. This is particularly troubling, say the commissioners, because much what they have seen is not good news.
Some of the increased demand can be linked to growing awareness of the privacy and access acts, which are 13 years old. But the commissioners said the Internet, sophisticated databases and digitization of records are creating the real threats, both inside and outside government.
According to deputy information commissioner Alan Leadbeater, government officials have learned that communicating electronically is politically safer than committing something to a hard copy because hitting the delete key is easier that tracking down and shredding photocopies.
"Records management in the electronic environment is just a nightmare," he says "E-mail has the possibility of undermining the Access to Information Act altogether .... Senior managers of the government of Canada explicitly state they like this because they can get around Access to Information," Leadbeater added.
Meanwhile, Grace says, many Canadians are demanding increased electronic access on the assumption that it will be easier and cheaper than on paper. But some bureaucrats approach the subject differently. "The new technology for the government is really not seen a way of communicating information to the citizen, but getting information from the citizen," he says.
The same technology creates the opposite problem from the privacy commissioner's point of view. The Privacy Act guarantees that a personal record collected for one purpose can't be used for another. But government departments can easily exchange and consolidate databases, often in the name of cutting the costs that come with duplication.
"The government is not unaware of this and it would be unfair to create the impression that no attention is being paid to it," Phillips says. Still, he added, reality is quickly outpacing legislation. "The whole thrust of information technology in government is to make more efficient use of the information holdings," he says. "We've got to update our privacy laws and practices to make sure proper safeguards are built in."
Both Grace and Phillips say they'd like to devote more attention to studying the technological changes, but can't find the necessary resources.
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