PETALING JAYA: The Official Secrets Act (OSA) is expected to be amended so that it does not conflict with the proposed Freedom of Information Act (FoIA), it was revealed.
The Act is among a raft of reforms by the unity government to improve government accountability and fight corruption.
Bandar Melaka MP Khoo Poay Tiong, who is part of an inter-party group involved in overseeing the FoIA Bill, said the government is working to table the Bill and OSA amendments by the year-end.
He said amending the OSA is vital in changing the culture and mindset of civil servants “more used to keeping information from the public eye rather than disclosing them”.
“The Prime Minister has said that the FoIA Bill is among those he wants to table this year as part of the government’s overall institutional reforms package.
“If we can pass this law by the year-end, it will greatly improve the public’s ability to track how the government spends taxpayer funds.
“It is a priority reform that can be implemented within the government’s current five-year term to promote greater transparency and accountability,” Khoo, a member of the Inter-party Group on Integrity, Governance, and Anti Corruption, told The Star.Passed in 1972, the OSA governs the access of information which the government has classified as an “official secret”.
It was previously reported that the FoIA will allow ordinary members of the public to file requests to any government department for information or data on its programmes, operations and how it spends its allocations.
The Act will create dedicated government units and information officers who will be tasked with handling information requests from the public.
Only a limited list of information categories, such as those deemed critical to national security and defence, will be off-limits, said Khoo.
“For example, how do you manage military secrets? The answer is we can reveal something, but not everything.
“We can reveal the prices of military equipment and where we bought them from, but we can’t reveal its specifications and how we will use it,” he pointed out.
The Act will also establish an independent appeals board to hear complaints about requests that are denied by the government and to determine whether those rejections are valid.
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Khoo, who is the Kota Melaka MP, said this was derived from countries that have been successful at implementing the FoIA.
“An independent appeals body is crucial to reviewing government denials and helping to shift the mindset among government officials,” he added.
Khoo said among the key lessons learned from Australia and Sri Lanka, which have similar laws, is that as the culture of disclosure and transparency began to set in among bureaucrats, they revealed information even without being asked.
Wathshlah Naidu, a civil society activist working with Khoo, said this included information that was of interest to the general public or a community such as Environment Assessment (EIA) reports on infrastructure projects, contracts and the tendering process for government purchases.
“In Australia and Sri Lanka, the more government information officers received applications about public interest projects, the more they became aware of a pattern.
“So they learned to be proactive and started releasing information on those projects without being prompted,” said Wathshlah, who is the executive director of the Centre for Independent Journalism.
