What’s the ‘black box’ of B.C.’s freedom of information systems? Watchdog study shining light on little-understood process

The legislature building in Victoria, B.C., on Monday, September 25, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito

An independent transparency watchdog has spent years trying to crack open the “black box” that shrouds the B.C.’s government’s systems for turning over records to journalists, researchers and everyday citizens—and it’s begun sharing its findings.

Public bodies are legally obligated to fulfill requests for records filed under freedom of information laws, with few exceptions, and advocates say the process is a crucial tool in holding those in power accountable. Efforts to avoid embarrassing FOI disclosures, for example, were what led to the infamous “triple delete” scandal under the previous B.C. Liberal government.

But how the fulfilling of FOI requests is actually handled by staff at provincial ministries and agencies is little-understood—a knowledge gap the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association is now filling with a pioneering research project.

“Oftentimes you analyze FOI systems by looking at things like response times, numbers of requests, numbers of complaints, and whether redactions are used,” said Mike Larsen, FIPA president.

“What we wanted to do was add something a bit novel to this field, which was to look at how analysts who are responsible for receiving and processing our FOI requests really do their work.”

The project—which began in 2023, led by FIPA research co-ordinator Spencer Izen—used the FOI process to demand internal documents from all 24 provincial ministries and 32 public sector organizations that are subject to both the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Information Management Act, including training materials and guidelines.

• Related: FIPA’s Access Regimes 2025 Preliminary Report

Part of the goal was to shine a light on sometimes-contentious choices made within the government, such as how employees decide what constitutes “policy advice,” a common justification used when public bodies withhold information following an FOI request.

“We’re using the documents not just for their informational content, we’re also asking how do the texts that we’ve collected … tell our civil servants how to do the work?” said Izen. “How are they resolving these really complex questions?”

While the study is ongoing, FIPA has published a preliminary report highlighting some concerns the non-profit has identified so far, including what it calls the “black box.” The term refers to an absence of clear explanations, among most of the material obtained, for how applicable records are identified—and in some cases, redacted—in response to FOI requests.

“We’re not seeing the types of information-retrieval systems—and the application of exemptions to the documents that are retrieved—standardized in a way that’s appropriate,” said Jason Woywada, FIPA’s executive director.

If the available guidance doesn’t offer explicit instructions for tackling the touchiest of FOI requests, the concern is that staff can adopt an ad-hoc, “vibes-based” approach to a fundamental and legally mandatory process, Izen said.

It also gives “more room for bad actors to act badly,” Woywada added.

And while B.C. law generally requires government bodies to fulfill FOI requests within 30 days, few ministries or agencies were able to provide their materials to FIPA within that deadline—an outcome that was not at all surprising to the watchdog.

“It’s worth noting that we weren’t asking for ‘state secret’-type requests,” Larsen said. “We’re looking for handbooks, we’re looking for guidance materials.”

One body, the Provincial Health Services Authority, still has not turned over its materials, nearly two years after the project started.

But FIPA has obtained thousands of pages of government documents, previously unseen by the public, in response to its other requests, and has shared them online for anyone interested in the project, along with ratings for each public body.

As transparency advocates, FIPA wanted to “take pains to show our work,” Larsen said.

“All that material’s there and it’s accessible–and we’re going to be continuing that work in the months to come,” he said.

The watchdog’s final report is expected to be released in May 2026.