Sometimes the Cayman Islands’ small size makes for some interesting workplace appointments.
Case in point: The recent choice of Leonard Dilbert as the chief of staff for Premier McKeeva Bush’s office.
Mr. Dilbert took up the post Wednesday. He’ll be in charge of the office and will provide policy and administrative advice and support. The job also helps coordinate government policy across the five ministries.
Mr. Dilbert is a long-time public servant, having joined the civil service in 1978. Between 1995 and 2005 he worked in the private sector before returning to government in 2005. Much of his time over the past several years has been spent as the acting chief officer with in the ministries of Health, Community Affairs and Tourism and Development.
His wife, Jennifer – also a veteran government worker – serves as the Cayman Islands’ Information Commissioner. It is Mrs. Dilbert’s job to decide appeals on Freedom of Information requests.
The law Mrs. Dilbert’s office operates under has come up for some harsh criticism from Mr. Dilbert’s boss – the Premier – over the past few years. In June 2010, Mr. Bush famously slammed the FOI Law as a ‘scandal sheet’ and railed against the cost and the time civil servants had to incur in responding to open records requests.
”(We’re) paying a lot of money, Mrs. Dilbert, for people to pound you up and giving people information they don’t know what to do with it, but just to be slanderous, vindictive and dirty,” Mr. Bush said in the Legislative Assembly. “This is not the only cost. You should all bear in mind the tremendous costs of searching that the civil service has to do coupled with the time it takes to do so – all to make people beat you up and add to what is not there.”
Mrs. Dilbert’s office, in reviewing several instances of non-compliance with the FOI Law by the Ministry of Finance, Tourism and Development – for which Mr. Bush has overall responsibility – has not pulled punches
In one case from late 2010, Mrs. Dilbert found “very serious breaches relating to the handling of previous [FOI[ applications by the ministry”. Again in mid-2011, the Information Commissioner’s office reported on an “unacceptably negligent attitude” toward compliance with the FOI from the ministry that “can only be condemned in the gravest terms”.
However, Mrs. Dilbert points out that most of the FOI-related problems within the Ministry of Finance, Tourism and Development have been procedural in nature, and that improvements have taken place since then.
“I really haven’t had any political interference into [FOI} responses at all,” she said.
As for vigorous dinner conversations, Mrs. Dilbert said she and Mr. Dilbert – as long-time government servants who care deeply about Cayman – have had those discussions most of their lives together. She doesn’t expect that will change with her husband’s new appointment.
“We won’t talk about any particular case….but we do discuss the wider issues,” she said.
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