Geoff Helisma
NSW Information Commissioner Elizabeth Tydd spent March 29 at Clarence Valley Council (CVC) “promoting compliance by CVC with its obligations under the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 (GIPA Act)”.
Commissioner Tydd, who is also the Information and Privacy Commission’s (IPC) CEO and NSW Open Data Advocate, welcomed CVC’s proactive approach to compliance and its commitment to ongoing self-assessment and reporting under the GIPA Act – a big turnaround from CVC’s past opposition, for example, to upload councillors’ and senior staff’s declarations of interest to CVC’s website.
More recently, in November 2021, the IPC said CVC had “conflated” its implementation of the GIPA Act in relation to how it had enforced its ‘Unreasonable Complainant Conduct’ policy.
“Local councils are at the heart of our democratic system,” Ms Tydd said in a media release, “they represent and serve citizens, and their work has never been more important to the people of the Northern Rivers.”
Prior to her visit, Ms Tydd wrote to the mayor, Ian Tiley, who said in early March that she would “come and speak to the council to assist us with some ‘cultural change’ – her words, not mine – and to have a full and frank discussion to create a greater awareness of the obligations on councillors under the GIPA Act”.
“She specifically referred to the need for improvements in disclosures of interest, and she really wanted the council to succeed and make it easy for us to meet our compliance obligations,” he said.
After the March 29 workshop, the mayor said it was “fantastic for commissioner Tydd to take the time to visit Clarence Valley Council and put a face on the compliance reporting that we do”.
“She was able to highlight opportunities for improvement, trends in open access globally, and emerging funding streams aimed at assisting digital transformation,” he said in a media release.
Commissioner Tydd said she was “impressed by the proactive approach to compliance taken by the council, following the recent local government elections”.
“I am confident that over time we will see improved outcomes for the citizens of Clarence Valley and more robust information governance practices by council,” she said.
Commissioner Tydd highlighted a range of self-reporting tools that can be used to compare CVC’s performance with other local governments across the state.
In general terms, Ms Tydd said that a compliance audit of the government sector had “demonstrated low levels of compliance with open access requirements”.
“[However] this opportunity to directly engage with Clarence Valley Council provides evidence of a genuine commitment to improvement,” she said.
“It represents a notable cultural shift to greater transparency and accountability by the council.
“Applying tools such as the IPC self-assessment tool demonstrates that commitment and will lead to significant improvements for councils and citizens alike.”
Clarence Valley Council’s acting general manager Laura Black said in CVC’s media release, “The commissioner walked councillors and senior staff through our GIPA Dashboard and advised that in 2020/21 we performed well above average in terms of meeting the expectations in our release of information (96 per cent).
“But our timeliness in delivering outcomes (73 per cent) was impacted by the absence of a responsible officer for a number of months due to a delay in recruitment.”