'Stop the culture of secrecy in Gov't' – Doug Wheatley
He was speaking on his weekly talk show Speak Out BVI heard on ZBVI 780 AM last evening April 28, 2015.
“General we have a culture of secrecy with regard to any information coming out of Government and we have to try to break that culture of secrecy,” he said.
“I have heard people from the press talk about the difficulty in accessing information which is really public information. And one of the reasons is that some officers want to really CYA (cover your a**). They are afraid that they might get into trouble if they make documents available so they err on the side of secrecy,” he said.
Wheatley proposed that the Governor or Deputy Governor’s Office hold seminars for civil servants on what documents they can release easily and which documents are not for release. This he said will make it easier for people who are doing research and who may need information for any number of purposes.
He noted that there are documents that are classified and that are private, confidential and not available for all and sundry. He said too that there are some documents which are embargoed such as budget speeches which is only released at a certain time.
“By the same token, there are documents in the House of Assembly that do not become public documents until they are laid on the table of the House, but once they have been laid they become public documents available to all and sundry,” he said.
“I think we have to try to understand which documents we have to protect with our lives and which documents are available and open to the public,” he said.
Government is yet to pass the much needed Freedom of Information (FoI) Act which would give the public the right to have certain information not made public initially.
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