Civil Rights Advocate, Investigative Journalist
Wellington
New Zealand
Nicky Hager will be presenting on “Where are you, ethically?” on Monday
Some people would say that recordkeepers have an over-riding responsibility, standing above any other ethical responsibilities, to follow the directions of their senior management. But ethics is a personal responsibility. Every person whose actions can affect other people and society has to consider the ethical choices involved.
I will tell some real stories about some of the ethical questions that arise for people who work with official and private records. I will start with exceptional cases where people with control of sensitive records have decided that there is such a powerful public interest at stake that they have unofficially released information that their superiors were trying to keep secret. Then there are cases where individuals have done their job better than their superiors would prefer – helping the public to get information it was entitled to receive but which the organisation wanted to keep secret. There are stories of recordkeepers asked to destroy politically embarrassing files or to enforce access policies that hinder reasonable access. These are real life dilemmas that recordkeepers face.
I will also talk about the trends, seen from the researcher's side, of organisations providing the public with more public relations spin but less information; and of some government organisations moving to subvert official information laws by committing less to paper and putting less onto the file. Equally problematic is the organisations whose record keeping systems are not keeping up with technological change so that information that was once available does not go on the file or becomes less and less accessible with time. These are issues that many of you will see in your own work. What is your responsibility?
