Flows of information

I've mentioned before the shoddy treatment given to current Information Commissioner John Reid. While Reid has been given a temporary reprieve, his term is set to expire again in three months.

Today, The Globe has this web comment on the haphazard process used select information commissioners in the past:

Why, then, do we handle the business of appointing a commissioner so incompetently? One obvious answer might be that the government can't resist the opportunity to pick a referee who is more likely to resolve disputes over the release of information in its favour. But it lacks the skill - or ruthlessness - to get what it wants. Instead, its ham-handed efforts to stack the deck merely reinforce the public perception of its hostility to open government.

If this is the intent, there's apparently a new idea afoot. At least one question period in the Senate this week featured hints that the office of the Information Commissioner could be merged with that of the Privacy Commissioner. (I'll post a link when the page is back up - the Senate's debates page is always spotty about recent archives.)

I'm sure that in addition to using up added resources, the idea would be in part to force the officer to essentially pick "all information" or "no information" on both sides of the issue; there'd be a ton of cognitive dissonance for the same office to issue rulings saying that government information should be freely accessible, while the use of individual information should be restricted.

The problem is that while it may be difficult for any one person or office to uphold such a seeming double standard, there's ample reason for actually having different standards.

Individuals are entitled to privacy. When information is released for a particular purpose (and particularly to corporations, which is where the Privacy Commissioner is usually involved), each individual has a strong stake in knowing that any information granted is used only for permitted purposes - and has a right to avoid granting any information at all if a high standard isn't in place. There's no real countervailing societal interest in allowing corporations to sell, reuse, etc. information as they see fit, contrary to the wishes of the individual.

The state apparatus is not entitled to privacy. Information in the hands of (and about) the government is collected through statutory schemes whose products should be open, and its release will be desirable from the standpoint of the people of Canada being able to understand the government they elect.

Conflating the two standards has the danger of eroding one (or both) of the principles.

For now, I'm rooting for John Reid to get another year at the Information Commissioner post. For the future, the government should put more thought into its appointments, and more importantly should make sure to keep the Information Commissioner's office separate and properly funded.