Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner
>January 26, 2016
Office of the Information and Privacy Officer: Publication Scheme Template
As part of its review of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the ATIPPA Review Committee stated that �the Commissioner shall create a standard template for the publication of information by public bodies to assist in identifying and locating records in the custody or under the control of public bodies.�
We are pleased to announce that this template has now been created and added to the OIPC website at //oipc.nl.ca/atippaguidancedocuments.htm. This is one the few remaining items from that Report to be actioned. Others include establishing a Duty to Document, which will require an amendment of the Management of Information Act, and a review of the use of Social Media in order to assist in further development of a protocol, which will be undertaken by the OIPC later in 2016.
This is a template only, and will become operational only as public bodies are designated by Government to comply with this provision. We encourage the Government to begin this process as soon as it is practicable, as the intention of the both the Review Committee and the new ATIPPA, 2015 is to make accessing information easier for citizens by providing these publication schemes for as many public bodies as possible.
This template and the publication schemes that will be created using it are a separate initiative from the Open Government project. Open Government is about proactively disclosing information held by the Government in the course of its work, whereas the publication scheme will provide a listing of the types of records held by all Public Bodies in order to make it easier for the public to find out the kinds of records which are held by each public body. The publication scheme will also inform the public of what personal information public bodies hold about them and how it interacts with this information (its authority to collect it, the purpose for which it is used or given to others, and to whom it is disclosing the information).
The OIPC looks forward to working with the public bodies that are designated by Government to follow this template as they work through creating their own publication schemes.
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Media contact:
Ed Ring Information and Privacy Commissioner 709-729-6309 |
2016 01 26 11:50 a.m.