Cabinet Secretary Dr. Carlton Davis was recently the guest at The Gleaner's monthly Editors' Forum, held at the newspaper's North Street office, Kingston. Below are excepts of his comments on a number of issues affecting the public sector.
THE RELEASE OF CABINET
DOCUMENTS UNDER THE ACCESS TO INFORMATION ACT
Well, firstly, the present Government in 1994 opened up the Cabinet more. I think you are going to see more openings generally. My concern is not so much the openness, which I don't think a lot of people are opposed to. My concern is our preparedness to deal with it. We at the Cabinet office are interested in organising our documentations, and if you ask for something in 1986 we can find it.
For example, right now we have a 30 years process for Cabinet documents, although I am not seeing a single request, to tell you the truth I thought researchers and so on would be interested. I think in the present legislation, that's going to be cut to 20 years, but even then most of the things are coming out.
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ACCESS TO INFORMATION ACT AFTER PASSAGE
Well, some of us feel that a year is too short, but you are going to need training, we are going to need some specialist people who will deal with the storage and retrieval of information.
The easiest part frankly is getting the law through, it is to prepare the public service that has for decades not been in this mould of releasing information and to prepare it now for this sort of an open environment and is not an easy transformation.
My view is that one year is not sufficient, but the Government feels that it is, I was thinking myself that 18 months to 24 months.
So it is not just for the public and the media, but for ourselves. If we have a good system of storage and retrieval of information, there is something in it for us, but the resources are going to have to be put in the training and in the organisation of the data.
TOURISM
The industry is going through a difficult period. There is a fall off at principal airports like Kennedy, Artsfield in Atlanta and so on, because people are travelling less for one reason or the other.
They are clearly waiting to see if the economy is going to rebound and, on top of that, whether the terrorist threat is abating. So there is that situation that is affecting us, apart from any internal weaknesses in how much is spent for marketing and so on. So, there is no question, it's a difficult period.
BAUXITE INDUSTRY
You know we just came to an agreement with ALCOA on a new fiscal regime and an announcement was made for 250,000 tonnes expansion of capacity and that is on stream. As a matter of fact, we have begun mobilisation and employing people for example. ALCOA is the largest player in the industry and we thought it was important for them to show a vote of confidence in Jamaica, and that is the very positive side.
The less than positive side is the fact that the major player in the Jamaican industry is presently in bankruptcy proceedings and that's Kaiser Aluminium. That is a real challenge when your major player is under stress. That is a situation that we are carefully monitoring, we are in touch with them and we are monitoring the outcome.
MODERNISATION OF THE CUSTOMS DEPARTMENT
The customs is a major area of reform from the point of view of servicing business,.
There are a lot of people who believe in adding to the interview the psychometric test. I have never undertaken one myself, so I don't know if I would pass one, but I gather that when properly conducted, they can bring out things which gives you a more accurate view of the likelihood of a person succeeding in a particular type of operation.
In fact it has created some upset and we are trying to ensure that the thing is managed and people who are not selected are given career guidance and assisted in some transition. The truth is that some are likely to be permanently displaced and they can't be accommodated in the system for one reason or another.
THE CORRUPTION
PREVENTION ACT
When we looked at it, we said what we don't want is a situation, a bureaucratic situation, where everybody files, and the office of the Commission is so loaded with files, that they really don't get around doing more than so much and corruption is going on.
So we decided that the thing needed to be amended to say that everybody would file, all the specified category in the first year and then following that the Commission would almost like an audit process, just pick on you or you, as the case might be, in numbers that they can manage. That is what the Auditor General does for example. The Auditor General does not go into every department and every place every day, he picks and so on.
And we also wanted to make sure that we didn't destroy the Government's ability to get boards appointed, so for example, people were threatening to resign from school boards, because the way the law design public officers everybody on a little school-board in some country schools would be filing returns, which could clog the system. So we had to clarify that and put down something that the office could manage properly.
PUBLIC SECTOR MODERNISATION PROGRAMME.
Well, I think that the media could help us in communicating what the programme is about, the media could also assist us in evaluating the programme, in showing up strength or weaknesses.
Obviously, you can't do everything for us, but I think the media could assist in evaluating and also in explaining some of the constraints.
I think that the media can help us, and we are open at any stage to interview, whatever, in saying what we do and what we think we are achieving and where we think we are achieving and where we think the weaknesses are.
