OTTAWA – Thanks to over 500 Access to Information requests in just three months, CBC/Radio-Canada is having to staff up its Access to Information Office
CBC/Radio-Canada came under the Access to Information Act on September 1, 2007 and since then, it has received nearly 500 requests, “which is substantially higher than was anticipated, based on benchmarking against other organizations of similar size and scope,” says the Corp.
“For instance, this is more than the number of requests typically received by the Department of Industry for an entire year. Amongst the Crown Corporations that came under the Act on September 1, the distant runner-up received approximately 50 requests in the first month, compared to a September total of about 350 for the national public broadcaster,” reads the press release.
"We did not anticipate the volume of requests nor the labour-intensive nature of some of them," said Meg Angevine, Access to Information Co-ordinator. "As a result, the resources we had put in place to manage ATI have not been adequate to the task and we will not meet the target of responding to all requests within a 30-day timeframe.
"CBC/Radio-Canada takes its responsibilities under the Act seriously and will put in place processes and resources to respond to the flow of requests as quickly as possible," continued Angevine. "We have engaged an expert in access to information who will provide us with advice on how best to reorganize our resources. In the interim, we are actively filling additional positions to help us administer the backlog and get on a better footing."
It’s expected to take a number of months to revamp the ATI Office and overcome the backlog.
