Civic Alert: A laborious move to e-transparency

Groups with a message now use the internet and its multiple tools abundantly. American politics are leading the way, embracing each new medium as it becomes established.

Three years ago, Howard Dean, the Vermont physician turned state governor, launched a bid for the US presidency with a campaign based on electronic outreach.

E-mail was already established, but blogging and social networking (YouTube, Facebook and others), have since become routine tools of American politics. They have yet to be taken up in Canada to the same extent, but their use is growing.

Closer to home, the Westmount Municipal Association has been leading the way through its website www.wma-amw.org run by president Dr. Henry Olders, although its objectives are more civic than political.

Nevertheless, it is innovating. The association’s blog system was an additional outlet for publicizing views about artificial turf.

Last month, the WMA site experimented with a task that many would think belongs to the city itself.

Trent’s innovation

Peter Trent, early in his mayoralty, agreed that the WMA should have an advance copy of the basic documents that each councillor receives for every statutory monthly meeting. The City Clerk’s office has continued the service despite mergers, demergers and other pressures.

Subsequently, a copy was also made available in the Library near the Reference Desk, and another copy placed at the back of the council chamber before each meeting.

This service is an example of Westmount’s democratic culture. To the best of my knowledge, no other council on the Island provides the public with anything like this level of information — although other methods of reaching the public are beginning to emerge.

WMA wants e-version

In recent years, the WMA and others have asked that the information be made available electronically.

“After all, for years now all the documents have been produced on computers, so they are already available in electronic form,” reasons Olders.

“We do not want to make work for City staff, but it is information the whole public, not just WMA members, are entitled to. The technology exists to make it easily available.

“One would think it is a small task to assemble the various items and email the result to whoever is interested. Alternatively, they could be put on the website, and those interested be informed by email of its posting.”

When raised at Council, Mayor Karin Marks agreed with the point, but the e-documents never materialized, perhaps getting lost in the committees that deal with these things.

Olders put it to the test himself when the documents — average number of pages — were received for the June meeting. As the originals were unavailable to him, he painstakingly scanned every page and loaded them on the WMA website.

Then he sent an e-mail to all members alerting them of the documents’ availability.

The whole job — done labour-intensively on his home equipment — took only two hours!

Timely flow

Making the support documentation available was a first step, but the WMA has asked repeatedly that it be distributed more expeditiously.

“Why cannot the minutes of meetings be posted when the final drafts are ready?” Olders wants to know. “They can be marked ‘preliminary’ until they have been formally ratified by Council.”

This is a trend elsewhere. Several Montreal boroughs, as well as the Communauté Métropolitain de Montréal, have used this procedure.

The minutes have to be compiled and made public anyway, so why not make them available sooner rather than later, particularly as little or no extra work is involved?

Some councils are going much further. The oft-maligned City of Montreal Executive Committee publishes a bulletin each week of the decisions taken. Although this includes most, but not all, decisions, there is rarely any indication of what was discussed.

This is done in the name of chairman Frank Zampino and it involves substantial work.

Several boroughs issue summaries of council meetings in the mayor’s name, although they can be rather skimpy. Our neighbours, CDN-NDG, regularly e-mail short “highlights” bulletins in French and English the day after each meeting

Superb Ottawa

Megacity Ottawa creates a superb digest of meetings of the council’s main decisions and the background to them.

In California, Santa Monica, for example, has a model summary emailed out within a day of each weekly meeting. It records all the decisions, including a synthesis of any debates and statements.

Almost all of these are available by e-mail to citizens just by a simple request to be put on an email list, and require no additional staff work once that has been done.

Although Westmount has yet to move in this direction, it is no longer cutting edge. In dozens of North American and European cities, council meetings are televised and, in some cases, the broadcasts are retrievable via the internet.

Offering sound

“I think the time has come for Westmount to offer at least a retrievable audio stream,” Olders added. “The Actualités Westmount journal offers this service. This is a wonderful public gesture, but really it should be done by the City.”

Obviously most council work is done outside the council chamber and Olders has been pressing for this to become more transparent. Of course, full access is not expected as a lot of committee work is preliminary or confidential.

These days, commissioners almost never report on their portfolios. However, heavily edited minutes of the Standing Committees are included in the monthly documents. Unfortunately, they are often so late that they lose their role as part of the information chain during the decision process.

At the June 18 council meeting, reports were deposited of two committee meetings held in April — not even the previous month. The other standing committees were not reported on at all!

Better understanding

“Even though it may present difficulties for the administration, we feel that the public should have timely access,” said the WMA president.

Olders has raised the issue of more up-to-date documentation at several Council meetings and, while getting a sympathetic hearing, there is no substantial change.

“It is frustrating,” he said.

A good deal of the bad feelings over the Park issue in the spring was generated over the mysteries of Council’s operation.

No doubt council members do not share that perspective given their inside view. But in the end, it is the outsiders who have to be convinced. Olders’s suggestions would go towards helping citizens understand the working of City Hall.



Community activist Don Wedge can be reached at calert@web.net. His columns are archived at www.westmountexaminer.com, go to Opinion.