When we started this research, we recognized the possibility of a defensive reaction from the provincial government and some public bodies. Although none of the information we requested was public, some of our requests could be considered routine by the receiving public body. After filing ten separate requests to one ministry, we were asked to […]

Multiple BC Governments committed to addressing the problem of deliberate record destruction that was revealed by the infamous triple delete scandal. They claim to have solved the issue and improved access to information by putting in place the Information Management Act and updating FOIPPA to include penalties for improper deletion of records.   Specifically, under FOIPPA, […]

Trust is gained through transparency. Understanding how a freedom of information request is processed helps us better understand how to frame our requests. Without information available online, we made a request for it. We chose a formal request to ensure we received a response backed by legislated guarantees and redress.  We sought to learn: At […]

An important first step was identifying who Information Access Operations, the central FOI processing unit of the BC provincial government, provides service to, and the scope of that service. That information isn’t online, so we were left to make a request of some type. We chose a formal request to ensure we received a response […]