The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE public may be able to request information under the Freedom of Information Act by September or October of this year, according to Information Commissioner Keith Thompson.

The retired Supreme Court judge said a system is being created to facilitate requests.

“We anticipate having that technology in place by September or October,” he said yesterday.

He spoke to reporters at the National Training Agency, where more than a dozen government workers gathered to be trained as information managers.

Allowing people to request government information is an objective long in the making. Successive administrations had promised to implement a system but failed to do so by the time they left office.

Mr Thompson could not give a timeline for the FOIA’s full implementation.

“The full rollout cannot take place until we have trained every single ministry and or agency,” he said. “That would have to be completed before you have what you refer to as full rollout, but suffice it to say that the training will be continuous.”

“We do not anticipate any breaks. Once we finish one set, we will move on to the next and we are creating the unit that will oversee the training. Fortunately, we do have a Bahamian who specialises in record management who will also be taking part in this training process and the ongoing training.”

Mr Thompson said sessions with prospective information managers would be ongoing because many people must be trained.

“Because there are so many agencies, we have to phase them in and what’s taking place will be repeated for an additional ten ministries or agencies and then we do another ten or fifteen,” he said.

“Presently, the training that starts today and runs for three days is the first step. The second phase of that would be training on the actual system that the public will use to make the requests to the various ministries and or agencies for information that those ministries or agencies hold.”

Ten pilot government agencies were selected for the first phase of the programme’s rollout, including the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Health and Wellness, the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of the Public Service, the Ministry of Works and Utilities, the Department of Immigration, the Bahamas Investment Authority and Bahamas Power and Light.

“As I would’ve said earlier, records keeping, records management and this information manager position creates a new career path in the civil service so young people may want to look into it further as a career because this is a first for The Bahamas,” Mr Thompson said.

The last Ingraham administration passed a FOIA shortly before the 2012 general election but gave no date for enactment.

The last Christie administration overhauled that legislation but never implemented its provisions.

In May 2021, the Minnis administration made Mr Thompson the first Freedom of Information Commissioner. Shane Miller, a retired assistant director of legal affairs (ADLA), was appointed deputy.