JOURNALISTS, civil society groups and human rights lobbyists say efforts to gather information vital to their work are being hampered by the delay tactics of some public bodies, when they try to gather information using the Access to Information (ATI) Act.

The groups, which raised concerns at a recent public forum hosted by the ATI Unit and the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communications (CARIMAC) at the University of the West Indies, said legislators must urgently pass the proposed amendments to the 2002 law.

The amendments have been on pause for the past five years, following a mandatory review of the Act by a Joint Select Committee of the House of Representatives in 2011.

Executive Director of National Integrity Action (NIA), Professor Trevor Munroe, one of the panelists at the forum, pointed out that Jamaica ranks too high in the annual global competitiveness report ranking for transparency in government policy-making.

“I’m not happy to tell you that Jamaica ranks 91 of 140 countries. There is much room for improvement there,” he said, but noted that there are some public offices which display high levels of transparency, such as the Office of the Contractor General and Major Organised-Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency.

He further argued that it is now time for the Official Secrets Act to be repealed, as civil servants are still withholding information for fear of being penalised under the 1911 legislation.

Past president of the Press Association of Jamaica, Jenni Campbell, said that the ATI “was a fabulous idea that was well thought out and it has great intentions”. However, she argued that media colleagues at the

Gleaner have expressed “some level of discontent” over the conflict between that Act and the Official Secrets Act, especially when politicians become involved in the ATI process.

She noted that journalists said they experience abuse of the system, when officers delay the release of information by requesting repeated extensions, until the information is no longer relevant.

Campbell said another delay tactic media complained about is requesting information, only to have the government entity issue a release on the very subject to the wider media. “It becomes a public discussion, and the real information that you sought in the first place is not made available and by the time you get it, everything is already in the public domain,” she explained.

Meanwhile, attorney-at-law for the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET), Nastassia Robinson, said the advocacy group had its own troubles with the ATI process.

“One of the main challenges we have is the delay in responding to requests. The Act provides for a 30-day (response) period, and in addition to that, there is the option of the access officer or public body to request an additional 30 days. Oftentimes we have to do an internal review, because our request was turned down, at 90 days, and then we might have to take it up to appeal. In many instances, by the time we actually get the information, it’s too late to do anything, the damage has already been done,” she explained.

Robinson noted that there is also an issue with some access officers not being very familiar with the Act, which poses its own problems. She said that while the legislation provides for information to be given via telephone, or documents electronically, some access officers put up resistance to this. “I have a particular experience with a government officer who insists that she doesn’t have time to scan the document, and that she is going to photocopy and send it to me, because she is not going to spend time scanning it,” she shared.

Jeanette Calder, a representative from the Jamaica Civil Society Coalition, also expressed similar frustrations, as did spokesperson for Jamaicans for Justice, Susan Goffe, who argued that there should be proactive release of information in instances of public health emergencies, for example, instead of forcing entities to seek out the information and wait for a response.

On the matter of the Official Secrets Act of 1911, head of the ATI Unit, Damian Cox, explained that the ATI Act, in fact, supersedes the Official Secrets Act, insofar as it applies to the disclosure of information.

However, he explained that the sanctions for giving out prohibited/exempted information fall under the Official Secrets Act, not the ATI Act. “It’s (the Official Secrets Act) only there as a sanction mechanism,” he stressed.

For example, if a government official discloses the minutes of a Cabinet meeting, only the penalties under the Official Secrets Act would apply to that breach, as sanctions under the ATI Act apply to the prevention of disclosure of information to the public.