Monday, February 15, 2016

The Reserve Bank's OIA charges

Back in December, the Reserve Bank imposed a new policy of charging for OIA requests. So where did it come from? Someone used FYI, the public OIA request system, to ask. And the response is illuminating.

Firstly, there's a discussion note for the bank's Senior Management Group advocating charges. There are a couple of notable features. Firstly, the decision to impose charges is explicitly framed as a response to "greater public interest, because the Bank has been more active in the regulatory and policy space". Its also an explicit response to certain (and named) regular requesters, who for some reason the bank does not want to answer. Its also rooted in the bank's right-wing economics: the idea that if something is free, people will use it. The idea that a public agency might want public scrutiny or that it might be a core part of the bank's accountability to the public is not considered. Neither, of course, is the democratic cost of imposing charges.

Buried in there there's also some disturbing definitions. The bank's cutoff for when it will refuse a request for "substantial collation and research" is a mere three hours, while their definition of a "high volume requester" is someone who makes two requests a month for two months. Combined, these basically rule out any use of the OIA for serious research or investigation of the bank's policies, whether by academics, investigative journalists, or the public. And while MPs won't be charged, their requests will still be refused if they take more than that three hour limit. The net result: less scrutiny, and a specific incentive against regular scrutiny. Which means less accountability to the public.

Secondly, there's an approval memo, which is only available with annotations from someone from the Office of the Ombudsman. In the annotations, the Ombudsman's Office makes clear that they support charging, and are surprised more agencies don't do it. The answer is in the same document, in the section on practice at the Treasury: Treasury's comms team doesn't want to charge media "due to the likelihood of negative publicity and relationship damage". And that applies to the public as well. A "public" agency with a practice of charging for OIA requests can only be regarded as one which is unaccountable, untrustworthy, and with something to hide. One which does not understand who it really works for. If public agencies want to be viewed as trustworthy and democratically accountable, imposing OIA charges is exactly the wrong way to go about it.