Un-transparent

When the government tried to roll back the scope of RTI, there was the expected outrage from “people like us”. But if you thought that ours is the only free society where the government tries such things (Repressive, dictatorial societies won’t even start such an initiative to begin with), think again.

The Irish are even more clumsy in how they tried to roll back their equivalent of RTI, the Freedom of Information Bill. Take this clause from their bill:

“The FOI body shall take reasonable steps to search for and extract the records to which the request relates, having due regard to the steps that would be considered reasonable if the records were held in paper format”

Let me expand that clause in bold:  The Irish bureaucrat will have the right to reject a request for a record by conducting this wonderful thought experiment:

1)      Assume that records aren’t computerized; instead, assume everything is on paper and filed in cabinets that may be all over town, if not country.

2)     Now consider the effort to retrieve the requested info from such a paper based system.

3)     If the above effort seems reasonable to do, then provide requested info. Else reject the request as demanding unreasonable effort.

Wow! Did the Irish just un-invent the computer and electronic databases? That is so ironic given that the monarch of electronic search, Google, has its European headquarters in Ireland!