The Right to Information (RTI) Policy was developed by the Right to Information Steering Committee with the assistance of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and was approved by the Vanuatu Council of Ministers in August 2013.
“The policy commits the government to implement a range of improvements across the public sector including the development of records management policies, processes and practices and the development of a robust information access system. These include both the proactive publication of information as well as mechanism to facilitate information when requests are made by members of the public” said the Prime Minister.
The above two paragraphs were copied out of a statement released by the Office of the Chief Government Information Officer (GCIO) after the Prime Minister Sato Kilman called the media to announce this.
Right to Information is just like many of the issues pushed by United Nation bodies like the Rights of the Child, Gender, Equity and so forth. The United Nations has taken upon itself the mandate to push for issues that it sees as the rights of a human being. This is deemed as acceptable by many and of course, country after country have signed up to support these or “forced” to accept or face the consequence of being isolated.
The RTI Policy however is long overdue in Vanuatu. All information accumulated in government offices or public offices should be public information. These however are not made known to the public. To have a mechanism in place to facilitate accessibility to these is needed. The public in many cases is not well informed because the necessary information is only accessible to those who handle the information.
This has robbed the public of being well informed therefore not able to make the necessary decisions at times. This can also lead to bias skewed towards those with the information. This is welcomed and will give the public the right to their own information managed in a way that will have the best interests of the community.
The challenge is not so much the understanding of this, but the implementation aspect. Countries have developed their own understanding and implementation created and enforced by their cultures and though cultures evolve over time, sometimes certain policies are quite often very difficult to keep on track.
The RTI is one such policy. Basically one can assume that all information that is good for the public should be made available. Unfortunately we know that there is information that is out there that someone is keeping from the public for various reasons.
One could be that it will bring personal gain to one, therefore due to selfish reasons information might be kept away from the public. We all know that companies and countries spy on others just to access information that could be used for their advantage, either for financial or security gains. The effort and huge amount of money spent on effort to have access to information is undeniable, but if the public have the right to such information why aren’t they made public.
It is no secret that even politicians spend a lot of money to collect personal information on other politicians, so that they can reduce them to dust during campaigns.
Does the public have the right to such information? You might argue that of course the public needs such information so as to guide them in choosing whose name they will vote for, but in Vanuatu, we know they will vote for who they wanted anyway regardless of the quality of such a person.
The country had seen this over and over again, where in-spite of the available information, many choose according to preferences rather than to logic. People have voted for people because of being in the same family, afraid of losing their jobs if they don’t and many other illogical reasons.
The point here is that whatever it will boil down to choices just like any other things in life.
The RTI policy will endeavour to manage information that is passed to the public and will enforce these through legislation, but the truth is that individuals will do whatever they choose to do with such information. We know that there are individuals who will misuse information, but we need a system in place, to try to manage and try to get the best out of a deteriorating situation.
With the advancement of modern technology, the RTI policy will be enhanced but difficult to manage. Useful information can be used by those with bad intentions to harm and hurt others. The media with good intentions might use the information to educate and keep the public informed, but could be taken wrongly by others. Many public figures will try at times to sue the media for defamation, even if the information is deemed to be of public interest.
With modern technology, anybody could pass out information into the public arena. It is no longer just the media, but individuals can pass out any information to the public sitting under a coconut tree, seen only by wild life on a remote island somewhere in the vast Pacific Ocean.
Control mechanisms should be put in place, but these will be more effective to those who have proper attitudes and characters. The truth is that to those who are good, all things will be good, but the opposite is true of those with bad intentions.
The control therefore is not somewhere out there, but within each person. Since we all know that people will intentionally do things that will harm others, such policies as RTI are important to provide a pathway to take that will protect and try to reduce the inhumane dissemination of information intended to debase others.
Any information that is made available to the public, should be done so with the greatest of care, either by the media or anybody else. Information is power and if this is exercised in a manner that will hurt or devalue another, then all should take to heart that what you do to others will eventually return to you. The point here is information is and can be handled differently by individuals. To those with good intentions, it will be good, but with those with bad intentions it can bring harm to bring harm or devalue to another.
The Media Asosiesen blong Vanuatu (MAV) would like to say a big thank you to the former Carcasses Government that had firstly supported for Vanuatu to have the RTI legislation, and now with the Kilman Government for taking the policy onboard, through a government statement this week, that gives assurance that the RTI policy will be implemented in a period over the next five years. MAV extended its appreciation to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for their strong support in providing Vanuatu with a financial assistance in sending in a consultant to spearhead this ‘home-grown’ RTI policy in the past two years.