Vancouver's FOI practices scrutinized.

PositionGOVERNMENT RECORDS - Freedom of information - Brief article

British Columbia's Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) announced it is investigating the city of Vancouver for its freedom of information (FOI) practices.

Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham recently released a damning report on the province's illegal practice of permanently deleting e-mails, revealing that the government had encouraged, "willfully or negligently," a culture of permanently deleting or not even creating necessary records. The report detailed how political staff members are exploiting the ability to permanently "triple-delete" e-mail records before they are backed up to government servers, effectively erasing the only copy of what could be an important government record.

Denham also accused the government and senior staff of sidestepping the FOI law by not writing things down, deleting e-mails en masse, and narrowing the scope of people's FOI requests so they produce no records, according to The Vancouver Sun.

Director of Communications Cara McGregor told the Sun that OIPC staff will interview stakeholders and review internal...

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