“PATI & The People’s Budget: Now What?”
The “PATI & The People’s Budget: Now what?” discussion will be held on Wednesday, March 6, 2024.
A spokesperson said, “Information Commissioner Gitanjali S. Gutierrez and media personality Jamel Hardtman invite the public on Wednesday, 6 March at 6:00pm AST to join PATI & The People’s Budget: Now what? Keeping your government accountable, an interactive discussion on the 2024/2025 Government budget.
- What does this year’s budget mean for Bermudians and residents?
- What government projects are important to you, your family and community?
- What can you do to keep the government accountable and transparent in their decision-making as they allocate public funds?
“The public is encouraged to tune in and participate in this lively discussion and explore concrete ways people can use the PATI Act to hold the government accountable for its public spending and decision-making.
“Visit the ICO’s YouTube channel for further information.”
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Oh this will certainly be unbiased and objective…
The ICO seems to be about two years behind in processing requests. Why? In a good month, 3 decisions are released. Really? Where is the sense of urgency and oversight?
As it is worldwide, no one in government gets fired, fined, or penalized in any way for failing to comply in a timely manner to respond and/or failing to disclose documents as required in PATI requests. “We are overworked!” Yes, that is a legitimate excuse for missing deadlines and confirmed by an internal review – if you remember to request the internal review.
Our Government has information officers who know how to delay and obfuscate the PATI process and are supported by their managers who rubber-stamp internal reviews. Delaying is a tactic used to let the public forget what the documents reveal. IF the documents are released, any outrage is minimized because the public has moved on to other things.
I fully believe that the ICO serves an important function, but this service moves sooo sloooowly.
Just be grateful that the Public Access to Information Act 2010 operates at all. Our former Premier made much of the fact that the PLP Government passed the Public Access to Information Act 2010, but then the PLP Government neither brought the Public Access to Information Act 2010 into effect nor appointed an Information Commissioner.
The Public Access to Information Act 2010 was not brought into effect until 2015 and no Information Commissioner was appointed until 2015.