Duty to Document: How governments avoid transparency and sideline citizens through 'oral government' and deleting public records
Produced by InterPARES Trust and CIIPS, directed by Dwayne Beaver.
This short documentary uses an infamous Canadian incident -- the 'Triple Delete' scandal -- to illustrate how many governments around the world are moving to a form of "oral government" -- failing to keep essential records of their decisions, and even illegally destroying records to avoid accountability. This subverts freedom of information laws and suppresses democratic participation.
In 2015 the government of British Columbia was caught improperly deleting email records concerning missing and murdered indigenous women along the "Highway of Tears". The scandal opened a window on an entire toolkit of bad records practices that go on today within governments across Canada and around the world.
Zoom webinar speakers and panelists:
Luciana Duranti, Professor, Archival Studies, School of Information, University of British Columbia
Mike Larsen, President, BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association; Co-author of Brokering Access: Power, Politics, and Freedom of Information Process in Canada
Victoria Lemieux, Associate Professor, Archival Studies, School of Information, University of B.C.; Lead, Blockchain research cluster, Blockchain@UBC
Andrew MacLeod, Legislative Bureau Chief, The Tyee magazine
View the premiere, followed by expert panel discussion and question and answer period.
