Topic: Jan Liebaers

Cayman Islands Ombudsman Sandy Hermiston sees “exciting opportunity” in her new position supervising two partially functioning departments and three others which are new to the Cayman Islands.

A “blatant lack of respect for the laws of the Cayman Islands” was revealed in the Immigration Department’s response to an open records request for documents that took more than a year to process.

Within the next two years, the Cayman Islands will introduce far stricter privacy protection rules affecting every business that processes customers’ or clients’ personal information.

Acting Information Commissioner Jan Liebaers said he was not consulted about Governor Helen Kilpatrick’s decision to quash the release of a $312,000 taxpayer-funded consultant’s report.

When the Progressives passed their Immigration Law in fall 2013, they handed the Cayman Islands a ticking time bomb of uncertainty and legal liability.

Another oft-debated and much-maligned proposal – the Data Protection Bill – suddenly appeared before Cayman Islands lawmakers Wednesday, in the midst of their ongoing debate over the controversial Legal Practitioners Bill. The data legislation was put before the Legislative Assembly last April and later withdrawn.

Efforts to produce a public copy of a $312,000 immigration consultancy report were halted this week by a decision from Cayman Chief Justice Anthony Smellie. The consultancy review examined various aspects of the Cayman Islands system of granting residency rights to non-Caymanians.

Two key components of the Cayman Islands Freedom of Information Law and accompanying regulations are not being made available on the internet by about half of Cayman’s public sector entities, according to a report issued Tuesday by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Although it is unlikely Premier McLaughlin intended for us to take it as a compliment, being labeled “relentless” is among the highest praise a newspaper could ever hope to receive. We’ve already got the T-shirts in production.

Although the tracking of open records requests made to the Cayman Islands government has improved in the last two years, there are still a number of high-profile authorities that are not able to keep track of those requests as required by law.

The number of requests made under the Freedom of Information Law, giving the public access to government records, is at the lowest level since the law came into effect in 2009, according to a new report from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

It is all too easy to forget that government works for the people, and that information held by public authorities should be open and accessible, either proactively or upon request.

A government-commissioned review of the Cayman Islands permanent residence approval system, which was completed earlier this year, has been withheld from release by the Office of the Premier.

Cayman Islands lawmakers will try for a fourth time to enact data protection legislation – aimed at protecting the privacy of personal information – with an amendment bill scheduled to be brought before parliament in September.

“We now have an open government,” said Deputy Governor Franz Manderson back in September 2013, declaring that the Cayman Islands’ Freedom of Information Law was a success.

It has been nearly five years since the Cayman Islands government began installing closed-circuit television cameras to monitor public rights of way on Grand Cayman and in that time, no legislation governing the use of those devices has been approved.

The Cayman Islands Information Commissioner has rejected an attempt by the government to charge an individual $108 per hour so a civil service department could recover public records the person sought via a Freedom of Information request.

Flags were flying at half-staff in Cayman and around the world Tuesday after terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium, killed more than 30 people and wounding scores of others.

The Cayman Islands information commissioner and the former senior investigator of the ill-fated Operation Tempura police corruption probe have alleged that top local officials took steps during the last two years to block public access and scrutiny to records related to the Tempura probe.

Government records related to the ill-fated Operation Tempura police corruption investigation have been ordered released, although in partially redacted form, by the Cayman Islands Information Commissioner’s Office.