Annual Report: 2003-2004

Status report on access requests in a deemed-refusal situation

l. BACKGROUND

For several years, a number of institutions were subject to review because of evidence of chronic difficult in meeting response deadlines. In his 1996-97 Annual Report to Parliament, the former information commissioner reported that delays in responding to access requests had reached crisis proportions.

As a result, the Information Commissioner has adopted the following standard as being the best measure of a department’s compliance with response deadlines: percentage of requests received which end as deemed refusals. Every department reviewed has been assessed against the following grading standard:

Initially, six institutions were the focus of this review, with six having since been added, including Fisheries and Oceans Canada (F&O). This then is a report of the review of Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s performance for the period April 1 to November 30, 2003.

This Status Report reviews the continued progress of the department to maintain substantial compliance with the time requirements of the Access to Information Act since the previous report. In addition, this report contains information on the status of the recommendations made in the Status Report of January 2003.

2. COMPLIANCE HISTORY

The Report Card of January 2001, the first year in which Fisheries and Oceans Canada was reviewed for compliance with the statutory time requirements of the Access to Information Act, reported a red alert grade of "F", with a 32.8% new request to deemed-refusal ratio for the period April 1 to November 30, 2000. For the complete 2000-2001 fiscal year, the percentage rose to 38.7%.

The January 2002 Status Report, for the period from April 1 to November 30, 2001, reflected the new request to deemed-refusal ratio had actually increased to 42.2%, a red alert grade of "F", in contrast to the previous year. This report, as had the previous year’s Report Card, made a number of recommendations to the department to assist with the achievement of substantial compliance with the Access to Information Act’s time requirements.

In the last review, January 2003, it was reported that Fisheries and Oceans Canada had achieved a very significant turnaround in its performance results for access requests in a deemed-refusal situation. For the period from April 1 to November 30, 2002, a grade of "A" was achieved and that constituted ideal compliance with the time requirements of the Access to Information Act. Further review confirmed that this level of compliance was maintained to the end of the fiscal year with the final statistics indicating a 1.03% of deemed refusals in relation to requests received. This is in stark contrast to previous years.

3. CURRENT STATUS AND FURTHER RECOMMENDATIONS

The department continues to maintain this remarkable turnaround in the deemed-refusal situation over the past three years resulting in ideal compliance with the time requirements of the Access to Information Act. The new request to deemed-refusal ratio was 1.9% for the period from April 1 to November 30, 2003, for a grade of "A".

While this gives an accurate assessment of the deemed-refusal ratio to requests received within the above-noted reporting period, it does not take into consideration those requests carried over from the previous year, nor the number of requests already in a deemed-refusal status on April 1. In future reports, these figures will be taken into consideration; however, for this report, the grading resulting from that inclusion is provided for information purposes only. In this instance, the results of deemed refusals from April 1 to November 30, 2003, would be 3.9%, still a grade of "A".

Even though, a number of steps were taken after the Report Card was received in January 2001, the department continues to refine not only its procedures but also its structure.

A major reorganizing of the department in July 2003, for example, resulted in a change in the reporting mechanism whereby the ATIP Division now reports to the Executive Secretariat, which in turn comes directly under the DM. This provides a more direct line of command and in no way impedes the processing of records as the Coordinator has full delegated authority.

While this reorganization has had a direct benefit to the ATIP office, other departmental restructuring, the creating of area offices in addition to regional offices over the last couple of years, has added another source of records to be reviewed. This is evidenced in the following graph that indicates that, while the total number of requests has decreased, the actual number of pages reviewed has increased substantially.

As reported last year, a number of programs had been implemented and have since been expanded or improved:

• The ATIP staff recruitment and retention program and classification review of the ATIP office staff has been a particular success. It has allowed the ATIP office to establish a number of levels within the office providing for promotion possibilities, focused training and an enhanced supervisory capacity. Not only has this increased the overall competency of the staff but has also improved morale.
  
  
• Other initiatives--the national training program for headquarters and regional staff and OPIs, and the introduction of follow-up communications to OPIs--have resulted in one of the most tangible benefits. By increasing the level of understanding of the Act and its requirements by the OPIs, the ATIP office has seen a dramatic improvement in the response times by OPIs. Another component of the process was the introduction of the 9- and 12-day memo, wherein the OPIs are provided a reminder one day prior to the initial due date of a response. If the records are not received or the OPI does not reply to the reminder, a follow-up is sent on day 12 with information copies also provided to Senior Management. The practice, while providing the analyst with a most useful tool in monitoring response-time limits given to OPIs, also provides a management tool for the Coordinator to verify that the analysts were maintaining positive control of the flow of requests. The following graph demonstrates this most effectively. Three years ago, response times averaged over 48 days; the time has now been reduced to just over 9 days.

While the human and functional aspects of the office have seen significant improvement, the introduction of technological enhancements has contributed significantly to the institution’s ability to maintain its "A" grade of compliance.

The implementation of and expanded utilization of ATIPflow has provided ATIP management and analysts a comprehensive electronic tracking and case management system to track and control due dates for various parts of the access process. In addition, the introduction of ATIPimage has had a significant impact on the overall time spent on the review and preparation of records for release; hence, the ability to respond in a timely manner.

Although there has been tremendous improvement in the institution’s ability to comply with the time requirements of the Act and the overall productivity of the office, there is a constant monitoring of procedures to further improve F&O’s performance.

The following recommendations are made to support the efforts of F&O to sustain ideal compliance with time requirements of the Access to Information Act for the remainder of this fiscal year and beyond.

3.1 Objective for 2004-2005

The department has shown a commitment to make changes to support the reduction of access requests in a deemed-refusal situation and achieve ideal compliance with the time requirements of the Access to Information Act. F&O is encouraged to maintain a grade of "A" and set an objective for 2004-2005 of maintaining a request to deemed-refusal ratio of 5% or less.

3.2 Informal Access

F&O has expanded its use of the website to provide access to released records and other releasable material in a proactive manner and continues to identify and analyze situations where records may be provided as a matter of routine rather than through a request under the Access to Information Act. The department is encouraged to continue its review to provide greater access to clients through informal procedures without recourse to the formal access process under the Access to Information Act.

4. STATUS OF 2003 RECOMMENDATIONS

In the January 2003 Status Report, recommendations were made to F&O to set objective to maintain ideal compliance with the time requirements of the Act. The actions and measures described above have enabled F&O to fully meet those objectives.

EXCERPT FROM DEPUTY MINISTER’S RESPONSE TO STATUS REPORT

"I am pleased that the Department has maintained an ‘ideal compliance rate’ for the second year in a row.

I appreciate that you have noted in your report the significant improvement in response time from the offices of primary interest (OPIs). The employees of this Department have worked diligently to ensure that documents subject to a request are provided to our ATIP Secretariat within the deadlines set out in our process. Without this improvement the Department would be unable to achieve such success. The recent recognition of our ATIP staff at the annual Treasury Board conference is a reflection on the great job being done by the Department as a whole.

Over the past few years your staff has worked closely with our ATIP Unit to resolve differences in a spirit of cooperation. This cooperation has significantly contributed to the level of success that the Department has enjoyed, as reported in recent years and I look forward to the continuation of this relationship to the mutual benefit of both parties."