Editorial for 7 February: FOI making real progress

During last month’s Fidelity Cayman Business Outlook,
transparency in the Cayman Islands was a topic of the panel discussion.

Some panel comments suggested Cayman has a ways to go to be
truly transparent, while others on the panel praised just how far the country
has come, especially since the Freedom of Information Law came into effect in
2009.

The truth is, both comments were correct.

Cayman has indeed come a long way in just over three years
when it comes to government transparency, mainly because of the Freedom of
Information Law. At the same time, the government can do better.

However, a pervasive,long-standing culture of secrecy in
government can’t be changed in just three years. It will take time before a new
generation of civil servants and politicians truly embrace everything espoused
by Cayman’s Freedom of Information Law.

Regardless, FOI has been a major victory for transparency
here and people only have to know that other jurisdictions are now looking at
Cayman’s law as a blueprint for their own Freedom of Information legislation to
see how its success is viewed internationally.

Most impressively, FOI is changing the culture in Cayman’s
government, where some department heads are embracing the public’s right to
know.  Once such department head is Chief
Immigration Officer Linda Evans, who is now having the Immigration Department
issue an extensive quarterly report filled with useful and timely statistics.

It’s not that the Immigration Department was hiding the
statistics before now; if a member of the press asked for specific information,
they were given it, although it sometimes took time to collate the
response.  The difference now, however,
is that the Immigration Department is proactively sending out the information,
which means its also collating the statistics on an ongoing basis.

One might say that the Immigration Department should have
been doing this all along, and while that might be true, one should merely
consider that it wasn’t in the past and it is now.

That’s real FOI progress and we say kudos to Ms Evans and
the Immigration Department.