CAIRS FoI dbase bites the dust
p2pnet news view | Politics:- Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have quietly (surreptitiously?) killed the CAIRS (Co-ordination of Access to Information Requests System) database which’d allowed ordinary people to go online to identify millions of pages of once-secret documents.
The data have become public following years of freedom-of-information requests from journalists, experts and the public and “It was really a tool designed to make government more open,” the CBC has investigative reporter David McKie (right) saying.
Created in 1989, “it was used as an internal tool to keep track of requests and co-ordinate the government’s response between agencies to potentially sensitive information released,” says the story, going on:
“Now, users mine the database to do statistical studies, fine tune phrasing on new requests and discover obscure documents – often using the information against the government.
McKie runs onlinedemocracy.ca through which people search the dbase, after which they can make written requests for a copy of the already released documents by citing the file number.
“Public Works, which operates the database, spent $166,000 improving it in 2001,” says the CBC, going on federal officials in 2003 had been working on a publicly accessible online version.
New Democrat MP Dawn Black condemned the Tories for shutting down the system, says the story, quoting her as saying:
“It’s another example of the Harper government’s talk about accountability and transparency – they talk the talk but they don’t walk the walk.”
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May 7th, 2008 at 2:26 am
I guess things are about the same north of the border too…