Commissioner issues FOI warning

For the first time since her office came into being in 2009, Information Commissioner Jennifer Dilbert has issued a stern warning to Cayman Islands government agencies that preventing disclosure of public records is a criminal offence.  

Ms Dilbert’s office handles appeals of cases where an applicant has sought to obtain government information and has been denied in their requests by the agency that holds those records.  

“On at least two occasions, it appears that a public authority may have failed to identify records responsive to a request,” Mrs. Dilbert noted in a recent quarterly report.  

Mrs. Dilbert did not identify in the report which specific requests for information were involved. She also did not state whether the agency’s actions were intentionally seeking to prevent information from coming out – a key point under the law.  

According to Section 55 of the Cayman Islands Freedom of Information Law: “A person commits an offence is, in relation to a record to which a right of access is conferred … he – a) alters or defaces, b) blocks or erases, c) destroys or d) conceals the record with the intention of preventing its disclosure.”  

Conviction for such an offence can lead to a $100,000 fine and/or imprisonment for up to six months.  

Civil enforcement measures are also available to the Information Commissioner’s Office in cases where “egregious or wilful” failures to comply with an obligation under the FOI Law occur.  

“The commissioner will not hesitate to enforce these sections of the law where necessary,” the quarterly report statement indicated.  

Mrs. Dilbert also noted in her quarterly report that a legislative subcommittee’s review of the FOI Law had been completed and a report was ready for submittal to the committee of the entire Legislative Assembly.  

The full committee was formed in June 2010 with an eye to carrying out the legally required review of the law. The review was supposed to occur within 18 months of its coming into effect in January 2009.