2004 Chapters (Layout Features)

Establishing a Robust Transparency Regime: The Implementation Challenge—Theory and Practice: With Special Reference to Latin America, the Caribbean, and South Africa

Neuman, Laura; Calland, Richard

Carlton Davis is Jamaica’s Cabinet Secretary, the country’s most senior public servant. Eleven years ago, on one of his first days on the job, he took a walk around his new domain and discovered a room full of papers. There were piles and piles of documents. Rooting around, coughing with the dust, he moved one particularly large tower only to discover beneath it a silver goblet. Polishing it with the sleeve of his jacket, he read to his amazement that it was a special commemorative Olympic trophy that had been awarded to the successful Jamaican athletics relay team decades before. It was a national treasure, yet it had been literally buried in papers. What other nuggets of history or critical information were lost in the chaos of unorganized and discarded documents? As a scientist by training, he understood the value of learning from the past, and the importance of good documentation to make this possible. Greatly concerned by what he had found in that room and, looking back now, Davis traces his commitment to access to information to that moment. He recognizes the value of access to information as a human right, and the role information can play in engaging citizens. But equally so, as a leader in Jamaica’s quest for modernization in public service and more efficient governance, he believes that a well-implemented access to information law is an instrument that governments can use to learn from past successes and mistakes.