Note From the Author
First, Washington State Supreme Court is up for primary election (learn more from wasupremecourt.org)… as are state legislators and more. Please deposit your ballot in a drop-box by Tuesday night. Thanks!
Gemini AI cartoon of a BIPOC lady using a Washington State Official Ballot Drop Box to Vote by Mail
With that, the FIPA report that will be reviewed today that was half of the piece I wanted to do for the past month plus. However events got in the way. To the point I cancelled a make-up OLF Coupeville trip Monday to ensure stories got filed. OLF Coupeville:
Author Photo of “Panning the VAQ-139 Cougars CAG Bird Touching at OLF Coupeville In Front of the IFOLS Lights”
Also, there was sufficient Washington State transparency news to require a Wednesday update. Arguably so again, but more acutely, Wednesday the 5th.
With that programming note, the citizens group British Columbia Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA) dropped a new “Drawing Access Together” report also. Hence my choice of my high dynamic range photo of the BC Legislative Assembly near a June sunset for the cover photo. One intent of today’s Beehiv as you will read is to draw clear analogies but also contrasts between our two Pacific Northwest jurisdictions regarding public records production issues.
Finally, the British Columbia (BC) annual Information & Privacy Commissioner’s Report is intended to be covered in the August 23rd Beehiv as Part 2 of this series, as I will be conducting heavy travel & networking the week before. Plus I do have an informal word limit of 2,026 words - and when I decided on the editorial calendar, the Beehiv was around 1,700 words. This Beehiv is at precisely 2,010 words.
Author Photo of BC Legislative Assembly
First, Why Study British Columbia FOI?
Fair question. First, British Columbia is our immediate neighbor with a slightly different political system and polity/political culture. But there are many similar issues shared between the two jurisdictions in addressing Freedom of Information (FOI).
Second, one of those similar issues is as discussed with the BC Information & Privacy Commissioner, a FOIA disregard option that several states in the United States according to the July 30 Brencher Report are also considering. Quoting from Thursday’s Brencher Report,
California debated similar legislation this summer, where agencies could petition a court for a determination that a requester was acting “with malicious intent.” That language was pulled from the bill following widespread opposition. At least six other states debated, but did not pass, similar bills this year. South Carolina and Virginia would have allowed agencies to petition courts for additional time to respond. Rhode Island, New Jersey and Ohio would have allowed agencies to seek some kind of court intervention between them and what they see as a vexatious requester. Washington also discussed this for a request that is not necessarily malicious but overly broad. It’s chilling enough to allow agencies to ignore requests they deem bothersome, but hauling people into court takes it to a higher level – requiring average people to hire an attorney just to defend their query for information.
The Washington State legislation mentioned above was SB 5920. A bill that this Beehiv considered, “A gateway to opaque governance and decimating if not gutting the Public Records Act”. So clearly we have lessons to learn from other jurisdictions. I also comment British Columbia Freedom of Information and Privacy Association providing our region a differing approach to open government from others in the Pacific Northwest.
British Columbia FIPA’s “Drawing Access Together”
The British Columbia Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (hereafter FIPA for brevity) recently released a four-year study by Spencer Izen into how British Columbia’s Freedom of Information (FOI) processes actually work and potential improvements. Although I did give brief coverage last June of the report, this report will be given a proper deep dive.
“Records Management Worlds Are Messy Worlds”
A major finding of “Drawing Access Together” is, “Across the organizations we examined, records management worlds are messy worlds.” Part of the problem FIPA found was;
The terms information, document, and record are often used interchangeably across public bodies. Yet to records managers, these are all different things. The confusion may be attributed in part to FOIPPA itself: the freedom it grants is of information but enabled by access to records—many of which are actually documents until they are being held for a specific business purpose (according to rules for retention and classification).
This confusion has led to, “no standards or expectations to reach, just “best practices” to follow” and every public servant responsible to be their own records manager with the archivist/public records officer in an oversight role in something called post-custodialism. It’s not the best approach for managing public records. Then there’s:
FIPA Infographic: “You cannot disclose what you cannot find”.
About the Duty to Document…
FIPA Infographic: “BC’s duty to document is hard to see in everyday guidance.”
FIPA’s report concluded in part regarding the need to document actions - with my emphasis,
There is a serious problem with low-quality of documentation across the public service, particularly in ministries. Research, writing, and formatting literacies need to be recovered.
It might sound odd that a civil liberties group is calling for better documents. But documents and bureaucracy matter no matter the angle from which you approach the state. Documents make public problems legible over distance and across cross-sections in time. The documents we collected, in many cases, did anything but make problems legible; they demonstrated a serious deficit in the articulability of public administration, thus imperiling the ability to deliver an account of action.
The report went on to boldly state,
We are in urgent need of a documentary renaissance in which the human skills to research issues, write typified responses, and organize them into a graphically coherent text are the province of skilled, dignified bureaucrats empowered to serve the public effectively in a true “culture of justification.”
One could argue this same concern exists in Washington State. Especially after listening to The Public Records Officer podcasts. But that’s me.
“Make Recordkeeping Core Administration”
FIPA Infographic, “Make recordkeeping core administration. Records stewardship must move from the margins to the center of what it means to work in the public sector.”
“Drawing Access Together” also argues that,
Recordkeeping needs to become a core administrative imperative in the public sector. Government must allocate greater resources to these explicitly administrative functions, and political opponents must not take advantage of these critical investments as ‘Red Tape’ when, if done thoughtfully, they could be cutting-edge, world-class, mature and necessary developments in the delivery and organization of public services. We are openly and explicitly calling for more money, and more authority, for administration. A mature public will celebrate this; public services cannot be effectively delivered when organizational memories are cut short by a shared drive in the state of nature and when public servants cannot find what they need to discharge their duties.
. . .
What is it that history is for? While government cannot disclose what information it cannot find, FIPA perceives the first-order challenge posed by poor recordkeeping is that we cannot govern with what we cannot find. The case for the importance of recording information in a fixed medium is made by the weight of history.
Replacing Timeliness With Correctness
“Drawing Access Together” wants open government advocates to move on from timeliness to correctness. As the report explains with my emphasis,
Public bodies’ widespread contempt for their statutory obligations, and successive governments’ disinterest in addressing this moral failure, is a worthwhile and necessary object of continued criticism—but there is more to FOI than simply closing files. Not all file closures are equal, though they are certainty treated that way. Specifically, correctness, specifically, whether the right documents were rightly severed within the right time, needs to be the new standard by which we judge an access regime.
FIPA Infographic: “Evaluate FOI on the basis of correctness. Timeliness still matters, but access regimes should be judged by whether the right records are found, severed and released correctly.”
The recommendation then goes on to call for more “guidance” and direction from senior British Columbian FOI leaders. Also for “more controlled vocabularies” like replacing “any and all” with “the”. But that’s FIPA, I suppose.
Analogies to Washington State’s Sunshine Committee
The final recommendation by FIPA to, “Convene a standing, open government committee with the authority to advise the Minister of Citizens’ Services” caught this Washingtonian’s attention because the issue of “The current all-party statutory special legislative committee to review the Act every six years” which serves as, “An insufficient forum to discuss FOIPPA’s operational affairs” translates into Washington State affairs quite easily…
Author Photo of “Washington State Legislature Bathing in Light Under Puffy Clouds and Blue Skies”
Sadly, Washington State’s Sunshine Committee which is intended to review exemptions to the Public Records Act is also insufficient. Attempts to make the committee’s recommendations law - such as with 2026’s HB 2244 - get stalled out. As the Washington Coalition for Open Government put affairs:
Lawmakers created the Sunshine Committee in 2007 to review the growing number of exemptions to the state Public Records Act and recommend statutes for revision or repeal.
At first the panel showed promise as a mechanism for taking exemptions off of the books, thereby offsetting, if only a bit, the one-way ratcheting of exceptions to the state’s signature public records law.
It hasn’t worked out that way. Exemptions kept piling up and exceeded 700 in 2025. Legislators compounded the problem in recent years by largely ignoring the Sunshine Committee’s recommendations.
For the 2026 legislative session the committee resubmitted its recommendations from two prior years – 2021 and 2022 – that lawmakers failed to adopt.
With that, there’s another analogy that arises from “Drawing Access Together”. This one also makes Washington State look lackluster…
Comparing Open Government Manuals
Going to take a tangent, albeit an important one, here. See “Drawing Access Together” highlighted that there is an active FOIPPA Policy & Procedures Manual managed by the British Columbia Ministry of Citizens’ Services. Although FIPA found the manual needing more detail, the latest update when checked on July 26 was April 22, 2026 with after Bill 9 more updates in the works. There are also other online resources for those working in the FOIPPA space.
Author Raising A Glass of Champagne From the Victoria Clipper to the BC Legislative Assembly
A far sight better than Washington State’s Open Government Manual - which might be updated this year and last was on October 31, 2016. Although Washington State’s manual also covers RCW 42.30 the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA) unlike British Columbia’s - the manual was last updated in 2016, a full six years before the 2022 major renovation. I’ve discussed this sad state of affairs in a 2025 beehiv.
Concluding Almost Redmond Style
Many of the same concerns raised by FIPA apply to Washington State. Two countries, a province and a state, but the same cultural problems generally exist. Perhaps for the 25th Anniversary of Washington Coalition for Open Government in March, we can have FIPA over to discuss mutual concerns, eh?
Author Photo of Redmond City Hall in the Blue Hour
Explaining Redmond-Style Conclusions
For those that don’t know, a Redmond-style conclusion is a quick 2-3 sentence 30 second conclusion. The name for this is a tribute to the Redmond City Council - winners of an Underappreciated Award - for when the presiding officer calls out “In Conclusion” to urge folks to wrap up.
Also congrats to retiring Chip of RCTV - Redmond, Washington’s public access channel - for a long tenure of oustanding public service. Nicely done.
Just make sure everyone in many US states, but especially Washington State, to please get your ballot to a ballot drop-off site by Tuesday evening. Thanks!