Disclosure Today launched By Sasha Harrinanan Thursday, December 25 2014 PERSONS seeking information about public sector spending decisions in Trinidad and Tobago can now turn to the “collaborative” mobile platform, ‘Disclosure Today: Transparency on Demand’ (DT). Launched earlier this month during the 4th Caribbean Public Procurement Conference (CPPC) at Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain, DT is the region’s first “corruption-busting website.” Managing Partner of Rose Law Caribbean and co-founder of both CPPC and DT, Margaret Roses, said there are many times when public servants want to do the right thing, perhaps even become a whistle-blower on corruption, but that avenues to do so without fear of reprisals are often hard to find. “We have learnt that to really make a dent in this anti-corruption fight, this battle we’re engaging in, we have to do more to support the public sector professionals and many suppliers who want to do right but who fear recriminations, reprisals, (being fired). That was the whole genesis of the thinking (behind) Disclosure Today,” Rose revealed at the launch. DT was described as “a new social governance initiative designed to provide critical infrastructure to promote, facilitate and empower responsible and collaborative citizen engagement in public procurement.” There are three main functions that citizens will be able to engage in on this platform: 1) Request - You can make a Request for Information (RFI) under the Freedom of Information Act (1999). You can do so in your own name or allow the DT platform to do so on your behalf. RFIs and responses are published on the platform in a searchable database for the public; 2) Propose - You can propose a solution to community problems/issues in the public domain and those being debated in Parliament, and create a Solution Proposal Campaign (SPC). Your SPC is automatically sent to the Member of Parliament or public agency you choose. All solutions are published online and become part of a searchable database; and 3) Disclose - Make a Public Interest Disclosure (PID) anonymously or confidentially. Automatically synced to the email addresses of the relevant complaint and investigative agencies, your PID gets directly to where it needs to go “without hassle or fan fare.” You can make the PID in your own name or request DT to do so on your behalf. No PID is published on the platform and therefore does not form part of the searchable database. Public bodies are not excluded from this platform, and as Rose pointed out, they can actually benefit from having an official profile on DT. “This is not something that public bodies should be afraid of. This is something (they) should embrace. There are many benefits to a public body if it gets involved in this.” Rose, a lawyer specialising in criminal, public law and public enquiries, then listed four benefits to collaborating public bodies: 1) Demonstrate your organisation’s commitment to the highest standards of transparency, accountability and openness to citizen participation by creating a profile on the platform, and undertaking proactive disclosure of public information, thereby lessening the need for a litigious approach to access to information; 2) DT also empowers public bodies to engage with the public early on in procurement decision- making by complying with developing Open Contracting Data standards and sharing your procurement plans and projects; 3) By sharing ongoing status updates on projects of major public importance, you are able to demonstrate the effectiveness of your project commissioning and management, and ensure proper and more effective management of confidentiality in public procurement information; 4) By responding honestly and quickly to an RFI or SPC,” Rose added, “you are increasing public trust and confidence in you, a critical component in public accountability.” Rose noted that the DT model was designed in such a way that “if the public bodies do not come on board, we are going to be using the compunction and the force of law, under the Freedom of Information Act in TT” to get requested information. This was part of the ‘bottom-up’ approach which Rose spoke about during the 4th CPPC, where by “we need to move from top-down approaches to governance and try to see what we can do to create more bottom-up pressure, where citizens can become more involved in public sector decision-making in a responsible way.” She noted that this would ideally be done in a collaborative manner, and that if someone’s RFI via DT were to be “refused, we will take your matter to court for you without you having to pay for it.” “These are things that governments and public bodies ought to be doing,” Rose stated, “and we’re giving them the platform so to do...There is a win-win here. Public bodies can actually use transparency as a shield and as a defence. They can say ‘No, we’ve been absolutely transparent, we have engaged with you early on.’ So we think this is something, hopefully, they will not be afraid of but be excited about the possibilities of it.”
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 16:13:19 +0000
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