UPDATED - OpenGovWatch: Departments to post completed Access to Info requests ... eventually on January 1, 2012!

In her response to a question from Liberal MP Scott Andrews on the CBC's practice of posting a selection of responses to completed ATI requests on its corporate website, the commissioner pointed out that,  by the end of the year, all government institutions covered by the Access to Information Act would be required to do the very same thing -- or, at least, post summaries of ATI requests, including the ultimate disposition of the application: how many pages were released, if any, as well as whether certain records had deemed to be exempt or determined not to exist.

When Andrews expressed some surprise at the revelation, she reminded the committee that it was, in fact, part of the Open Government initiative, and noted that it would be up to Treasury Board Secretariat to monitor compliance.

As one does in such situations, I took to the twitter before the meeting had even wrapped up to express my delight at the news:




Sadly, it seems that I may have tweeted too soon. As it it turns out, the timeline for enacting that particular disclosure policy may be somewhat more ... aspirational than the commissioner's comments would suggest.

According to an email received from a TBS official in response to my tweets, the official expectation is that departments and agencies covered by the Act "move toward proactively posting summaries."

She wouldn't comment on the December 31 deadline that was mentioned by Legault.

Still, at least we can comfort ourselves with the fact that some departments and agencies have already taken the policy to heart, and are diligently posting completed ATI requests -- although generally, not the responses themselves -- on a monthly basis: 24, to be precise, according to open.gc.ca, including Public Works, National Defence, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, and, perhaps not surprisingly, the Treasury Board Secretariat itself.