$180 Million OIA Bill Is the Cost of Government Secrecy

A new report showing government agencies spend more than $180 million a year responding to Official Information Act (OIA) requests highlights the cost of failing to proactively release information.

Taxpayers’ Union spokesperson, Tyler Groenewald, said:

"The cheapest OIA request is the one that never needs to be made because the information is already available to the public."

"This $180 million bill is the cost of a lack of transparency. Much of the information being requested is clearly able to be made public, yet taxpayers are funding a costly bureaucratic process to release information that often ends up being disclosed anyway."

"Agencies should be proactively publishing reports, data, and other frequently requested information online. Countries such as the UK, United States, Ukraine and Brazil already publish spending and procurement data online, allowing taxpayers to scrutinise government spending without lodging information requests."

"An 'armchair audit' approach, where routine spending data is proactively published through a central transparency portal, would reduce OIA costs, strengthen accountability, and improve public trust."