The cam­paign by Speak­er of the House Wade Mark to make Par­lia­ment more com­put­er lit­er­ate and ac­ces­si­ble is a wel­come one. The Speak­er has wise­ly seen that the tra­di­tions of this cor­ner­stone of gov­er­nance can be lu­bri­cat­ed by the care­ful ap­pli­ca­tion of in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy up­grades.

In Au­gust 2011, this coun­try host­ed the 10th tri­en­ni­al con­fer­ence of the Com­mon­wealth Hansard Ed­i­tors As­so­ci­a­tion and had in­valu­able ex­po­sure to the state of the art in Hansard record­ing tech­nolo­gies and prac­tice. Mr Mark im­me­di­ate­ly com­mit­ted to speed­ing up ac­cess to Hansard tran­scripts and turn­ing the dry archive of Par­lia­men­tary pro­ceed­ings in­to a more open tool of trans­par­ent gov­er­nance and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

While Par­lia­men­tary pro­ceed­ings are tele­vised, mak­ing Hansard avail­able in near re­al time promis­es an­oth­er lev­el of en­gage­ment with the day to day gov­er­nance of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Speak­er of the House has in­tro­duced tech­nol­o­gy more di­rect­ly in Par­lia­ment by re­plac­ing stacks of pa­per with dig­i­tal doc­u­ments on iPads, it­self a small but im­por­tant change in the way politi­cians in­ter­act with the da­ta they must re­view and ref­er­ence.

A com­pan­ion build­ing to the Red House that would be home to ad­min­is­tra­tion and records fa­cil­i­ties could be tasked with both digi­tis­ing his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments and en­sur­ing that cur­rent Par­lia­men­tary pro­ceed­ings are trans­mit­ted via the In­ter­net as Hansard tran­scripts and stream­ing au­dio and video feeds. Some pro­posed tech­nolo­gies are easy to im­ple­ment.

Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith has sug­gest­ed in­tro­duc­ing large screens to dis­play the claus­es and amend­ments of bills as a sup­ple­ment to the read­ing of the doc­u­ments. Oth­ers will be more tech­ni­cal and re­quire greater lev­els of se­cu­ri­ty. In April 2012 a hack­er re­placed the home page of Par­lia­ment's web­site with one bear­ing a warn­ing.

On Fri­day, Mr Mark of­fered up­dates on the tech­nol­o­gy based projects un­der­way. By the end of 2012, pa­per use is ex­pect­ed to drop by half and the Speak­er hopes to host Hansard on­line, with un­ver­i­fied quo­ta­tions avail­able with­in 24 hours of a de­bate. It's to be hoped that this ef­fort at im­prov­ing ac­cess to pub­lic doc­u­ments sparks greater gov­ern­ment in­ter­est in us­ing ICT to de­liv­er more in­for­ma­tion that's owned by the pub­lic to cit­i­zens.

Since it for­mal­ly came in­to force in 2001, the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) has been leg­is­la­tion ho­n­oured more in the de­c­la­ra­tion than in prac­tice. Be­yond de­c­la­ra­tions of state en­ter­prise cor­po­rate struc­tures, get­ting in­for­ma­tion out of pub­lic bod­ies has proven to be a con­tin­u­ing chal­lenge.

As it's struc­tured now, the web­site for the FOIA is set up as a gate­keep­er for pub­lic da­ta, with in­for­ma­tion care­ful­ly tucked away on one side and re­quest doc­u­ments on the oth­er. There's no rea­son why foia.gov.tt should not host the da­ta from state en­ter­pris­es that the act re­quires be placed in the pub­lic do­main. It doesn't, be­cause that's the mind­set it was cre­at­ed to con­tin­ue.

Too much in­for­ma­tion gath­ered for pub­lic use is kept un­der re­flex­ive lock and key or filed in ways that make cit­i­zen ac­cess dif­fi­cult. Mr Mark is of­fer­ing an ex­am­ple that oth­ers in pub­lic of­fice should be keen to em­u­late.