Watchdog slow to act over Stormont secrecy

More than two years ago the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said that it would audit Northern Ireland departments’ compliance with the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act after widespread evidence of how civil servants and political figures had covered up key government decisions.

In 2018 the Head of the Civil Service, David Sterling, told the public inquiry into the RHI scandal that civil servants had consciously and deliberately not recorded some decisions which they believed may be embarrassing in order to evade the FoI law.

He said the two parties were “sensitive to criticism” and that officials had “got into the habit of not recording all meetings”.

At the time the Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, who polices the openness legislation, wrote to Mr Sterling to express her “deep concern” at what had emerged and warn him that she would be auditing his departments’ compliance.

However, more than two years later that audit has still not even started – and there is no date for when it is likely to get under way.

The news comes after it emerged on the Nolan Show that Executive departments have for more than ten years been operating a system whereby emails are automatically deleted after three months unless an official makes a conscious decision to retain them.

The Executive Office said that retaining lots of emails “creates a burden on the information systems and increases data storage charges” and it was the responsibility of individual officials to decide what to retain.

However, Ulster Unionist leader Steve Aiken said he was alarmed by the revelation and added: “If we are to take any lessons from the RHI debacle, it’s that scrutiny can help prevent future scandals.”

The News Letter asked the ICO if it had concerns about what Stormont was doing, whether it believed that material ‘deleted’ after three months should still be released in response to FoI requests if it is still held on other government servers, and whether it had gone ahead with the audit of Northern Ireland departments.

The body’s head of regions, Ken Macdonald said: “Records can help to tell us why a decision was made, who made it and when. They are necessary to create confidence in any decision making process, to promote accountability and transparency, and to allow others to verify what has been done.

“We encourage all public authorities to ensure that their record keeping reflects both legal requirements and business needs and is given the priority it deserves.

“We advised the NICS on the need to improve records management across the departments. It has developed new procedures which could only be fully implemented after the re-establishment of an Executive.

“It is still our intention to undertake an audit but this will only be done after sufficient time for practices to be fully embedded.”

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