Chilean Chronicles, Part 102: Culminating Thoughts on Transparency in Chile

Our days left here in Chile can fit on one hand-we’re flying back to Chicago and the United States on December 25-and I find myself in the summing up and looking back place that often is precipitated by the ends of experiences.

As I’ve written before, and really throughout, these chronicles, there have been many rich, meaningful and memorable aspects of our time in the land of Neruda and Mistral, Allende and Pinochet.

Friends.

Colleagues.

Students.

Travel adventures.

A profound sense of living out of our dreams and values.

There’s also been the research I’ve done about the landmark Transparency Act that was passed in 2009, a few years after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found in favor of former presidential candidate Marcel Claude that a right existed to government information.

Among the key components: the creation of an independent Transparency Council to which individuals and groups can appeal if their request for information is denied and accountability not just for functionaries, but for agency leaders who do not supply the data or documents that had been sought.

My goal as a Fulbright Scholar has not been to simply teach a course and conduct an investigation, but rather to spark relationships and bring people together who might not otherwise know each other so that those connections can continue after Dunreith and I return to the United States.

As part of that effort I participated a pair of conversations hosted by Fulbright Commission during the past couple of weeks. My colleagues at the University of Diego Portales and other journalists, folks from the Chilean government, people involved in transparency work in the non-profit sector, members of the Hack/Hackers community and staffers from the U.S. Embassy attended the events.

A research plan evolves

After thanking everyone for attending, I shared my original plan for the project.

Modeled on James Painter’s work on climate change coverage, I had intended to look at a year’s worth of coverage of El Mercurio, the country’s largest paper, before and after the law’s passage to determine what, if anything, had changed.

After arriving here, reading the paper on a more regular basis-it treated the fortieth anniversary of the Pinochet coup like a soccer news brief-and watching El Diario de Agustin, the documentary film that exposed the paper’s complicity with the Pinochet government, I decided to go in a more qualitative direction.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvo0939_bSc&w=560&h=315]

Instead, I approached the topic like a beat I would cover. As part of that commitment, I reported on what I did as I went along, using the iterative approach endorsed by dear friend Fernando Diaz.

As a result, I met with journalists at different levels of prominence and stages of their careers, with non-profit folks like ProAccesso, a group that does legal work on transparency, and Ciudadano Inteligente, a group that works to empower citizens through technology and access to information.

I talked with elected officials like Mario Gebauer, the mayor of Melipilla who had filed a lawsuit pushing for the emails of public officials to be public record.

I met with folks in the computer coding and hacking community as well as with people from the Transparency Council, the organ whose establishment was a key component of the law.

And I interviewed people from the Transparency Commission, the government’s organ dedicated to these issues.

I took other actions, too.

Within the country I attended and presented at Data Tuesdays sponsored by Fundacion Inria Chile, a French non-profit organization, and taught at the Winter Data School held at the University of Diego Portales where I taught. During our Data Journalism class I had students write letters and brought in a bunch of guest speakers, many of whom talked with the students about the importance of acquiring publicly available data.

And, with the help of lawyer friend Macarena Rodriguez, I filed an information request and appeal.

Outside of Chile I attended the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Rio in October and met with members of the data team from La Nacion when we traveled to Buenos Aires.

I blogged throughout about what I learned from these interactions, which took place during a time in which Chile not only marked the fortieth anniversary of the coup, but continued its ongoing transition from a closed and isolated dictatorship to a fitfully emerging democracy more connected to the world through technology and the global economy.

In addition to the specific area of transparency under the law, Chile was going through all kinds of openings from the past and into the present through the work people like the young volunteers of TECHO, who work in a holistic way with poor communities to identify and confront a plan to meet the challenges they face.

Or with people like Jaime Parada, the nation’s first openly gay public official who was elected in 2012 as councilman in the wealthy and politically conservative Providencia neighborhood.

Or members of MOVILH, one of the nation’s most visible and active gay rights organization.

Or Nancy, an Aymara woman who scours the Internet to send up north to members of her community about the devastation mining is doing to their land, who makes traditional handcrafts and is starting to teach her children the language that previously was banned.

Many of these individuals and organizations are part of a transition from an earlier concept of human rights as being individually based and consisting of dictatorship-era violations like torture, detention and disappearance to a more ample and collective vision that include the rights of people with disabilities and members of the LGBT community, the right to a clean environment, and even to Internet access.

I learned a lot through my research.

The good news first

The first part was that there was a lot of good news and positive developments around the law and infrastructure, which, along with Mexico, are among the best in the continent, according to transparency guru Moises Sanchez.

There are a core of people involved in the issue, many of whom expressed optimism and enthusiasm about the direction of transparency in the country.

The number of requests filed by citizens over time has grown to tens of thousands field per year.

It’s both an anti-corruption tool that is a central part of the government’s approach toward transparency and one that has the potential for historic reconstruction to gain a fuller and deeper understanding of what happened in the country during the earlier and darker time of the dictatorship.

The government has posted close to 1,100 data set on its data portal, and is working to integrate those sets with each other and with information from the country’s 15 regions.

The Council’s budget has gone up each year of its existence, increasing by more than 50 percent from 2010 to 2013.

The large papers appear to be using the law more frequently.

There was a Supreme Court decision in November that reversed its earlier position and said that emails from public officials are public record.

And the leadership of journalism organizations like Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Chicago Headline Club are willing to support continued efforts in this area.

Many challenges exist, too

At the same time, the law has many challenges, according to the people with whom I spoke.

Before its reversal, the Supreme Court had issued two decisions saying that public officials did not have to supply emails that had been requested-a position that was backed on the editorial pages of leading newspapers like La Tercera.

Many journalists are not using the law for a number of reasons. Some expressed the feeling that they could choose to wait close to a month, and very possibly longer, for information they could more easily obtain through their sources. Others said that some journalists feel they are betraying their sources if they request information through a freedom of information request-an attitude that suggests that their the relationship with a government official is more important than the public’s right to know.

There is a perception among many that law is the tool of the country’s elite, many of whom are male, educated, wealthy professionals with Internet access.

In 2011 President Sebastian Pinera, in a decision many considered to be politically, chose not to renew the terms of Raul Urrutia and Juan Pablo Olmedo on the Transparency Council, even though the Senate had endorsed their continued service.

The council is not officially linked to civil society, even though that option exists.

Many of the organizations engaged in transparency work have few resources and are isolated from each other. In many cases, there is little outreach.

As I experienced personally in my request, the process can be extremely slow on potentially sensitive data request, with government officials invoking concerns of national security and saying they have too much work to fulfill the request.

Finally, while the judicial and legislative branches have to publish information, they are not subject to the same disclosure requirements as the executive branch.

Based on this balance of positive and negative developments, I suggested that people consider working on legislation to address their concerns, collaborate more actively with each other, dedicate more resources to outreach, encourage the Council to develop an official link with civil society, and connect with people outside the country who are doing the same work.

I concluded by noting the following:

The law is still young, but has tremendous potential.

There has been significant progress, and the value and spirit of the law has yet to be truly realized.

The actions of the people in the room will play a role in the degree to which the potential is converted into reality.

I’m honored to be part of that dialogue.

From there, I opened the floor for discussion, which in both cases was lively and wide ranging.

I don’t want in any way to romanticize or elevate what occurred.

As always, the work of making a lofty promise real falls to those who live in that time and who must decide whether it is worth the effort, whether we want it enough.

It’s true that Dr. King said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b80Bsw0UG-U&w=420&h=315]

But he also said and wrote repeatedly that there is nothing inevitable about time’s passage and social progress.

Time itself is neutral, he said.

I did some research.

Two groups gathered and listened and dialogued with each other.

Folks who did not know each other now have met.

We've made a start, and we'll see how far we go from here.

I know that I’ll continue to work on this issue.

I'm transparent about that.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 72: Gains and Challenges for Transparency

I`ve been digging in the past few weeks on my Fulbright research project about the impact of the 2009 Transparency Law here in Chile.

This week I had the good fortune to meet with Francisca Skoknic, reporter for investigative non-profit outfit CIPER. Although a small shop-Francisca told me on Tuesday that they´ve got a team of just 10 people-they are by far the nation´s leader in hard-hitting news stories.

I also spoke with Felipe Heusser, chief executive officer of Ciudadano Inteligente.org, an internationally-funded non-profit that seeks to use technology to distribute power to the citizenry via transparency, and Rodrigo Mora. He´s the head of Pro Acceso, another non-profit that receives its money from sources outside of Chile, Pro Acceso focuses on legal work to advance its mission of making more information public and expanding the parameters of material covered by the law.

I´ll probably write individually about each of the latter three organizations, and for now here are the major points and current state of my thinking as the law heads toward the end of its fifth year of existence.

The good news

Each of these organizations is a part of a burgeoning civil society that is continuing to emerge in post-dictatorship Chile. Francisca, Rodrigo and Felipe all see the law as a fundamental tool in that process.

Each of the organizations uses the law in two primary ways. The first is to give it strength by having a steady volume of requests. Francisca said CIPER folks file requests daily, Felipe said Ciudadano Inteligente has helped citizens file about 1,000 requests thus far and Rodrigo spoken openly about bombarding agencies with requests on a designated topic so that officials there cannot ignore them.

The second method is to choose issues or aspects of the law that could lead to a lawsuit. CIPER was involved in a successful case against then-presidential candidate Sebastian Pinera around his refusal to disclose information about his foundation. The other two organizations were on the losing end of a Supreme Court decision that held that emails of public officials doing public business are not subject to the law.

More focused on documents than data, each organization uses the law as a tool both for present-day Chile as well as a part of the work of historic reconstruction of life during the Pinochet era.

Rodrigo mentioned that many documents about that time have recently been declassified, but have not yet been requested, while Francisca talked about the special section CIPER did for the fortieth anniversary of the coup. CIPER founder Monica Gonzalez, among other projects, played a critical role, along with John Dinges and Peter Kornbluh in bringing some of the regime´s foreign assassinations and the role of the United States to light.

Finally, all three people expressed a positive and optimistic sense of the direction the country is headed in regards to transparency. Francisca called the process ”irreversible".  Both Felipe and Rodrigo said there has been a lot of progress since the law´s inception.

Series of challenges

At the same time, the organizations and the people doing this work face a number of challenges.

To begin, each of the groups is small and comparatively under-resourced. Pro Acceso has a team of about 5 people, CIPER has but 10, while Ciudadano Inteligente is the biggest with about 17 or 18 employees, according to Felipe.

Their size means that they do not get to some of the projects they want to do.

CIPER would like to better integrate its requests and the documents they produce on its website, but have not yet gotten there due to focusing their limited resources on reporting, for example. Pro Acceso used to do more outreach than it did, and found that it had to focus more on the legal work itself.

A related corollary to this is that, even though they understand the value the community of computer hackers can bring to their work, they have not yet linked in meaningful ways to those people.

Pro Acceso´s difficulty with sustained outreach is both not limited to their organization and a symptom of another challenge: thus far the law has been largely a tool for elite Chileans. That is to say, that wealthier, more educated, digitally-connected people living in urban areas are far more likely to use the law than their poorer, rural, less wired countrymen.

The setback with the court´s decision about emails was a significant one.

In fact, Rodrigo said it was such a regressive decision that at times the folks at Pro Acceso are questioning the wisdom of having brought the case. That an increasing share of public business takes place online and that the case focused only on communication about public issues by public officials on public emails only heightens that concern.

Finally, CIPER is a glaring exception to a largely moribund press.

All three people talked about the concentration of major print media in Chile between COPESA and the Edwards family, owners of El Mercurio, and the resistance those entities have shown to pushing for more transparency. In fact, the editorial page of La Tercera, a COPESA property, sided with the government in the case involving emails.

It is important to note that there are individual journalists who use the law, and the number is few. There’s also the attitude Rodrigo said he’s encountered among journalists and that I heard echoed by a colleague that basically runs as follows: If I have to choose between waiting for more than a month to possible get information that my sources could probably get me in a day or two, I’m going with my sources.

In short, a picture is emerging of a small and dedicated band of transparency advocates, few of whom are journalists and most of whom are based in Santiago. They work in their own areas, and, in some cases, together to give the law meaning and to fight against continued resistance toward Chile’s continued movement into a more open society.

On to politicians and the government next.

To be continued.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 65: An Extraordinary September in Chile

Yesterday marked the end of an extraordinary month that began with memory and ended in transparency, with a hefty dose of celebration in between. MEMORIES OF THE COUP AND AFTER

For people in the United States, the the date September 11 has, since 2001, had a special meaning and obligation to those who were killed in the terrorist attacks in which separate planes wiped out the twin towers of the World Trade Center, smashed into the Pentagon and crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

But here in Chile, the date has been significant for the past four decades.

That’s because it was on that day in 1973 that a military junta headed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet bombed La Moneda, the presidential palace, overthrew democratically-elected Socialist leader Salvador Allende and ushered in a 17-year reign of disappearances, torture, murder and, for some, economic prosperity.

The coup and its bloody aftermath constitute an open wound from which many Chileans are still seeking to heal.

The early part of September saw an unprecedented outpouring of memory-related activity.

Plays.

Poetry readings.

Book launches.

Memorial events at former torture centers like Villa Grimaldi.

Scholarly conferences.

Documentary films about topics ranging from murdered members of Allende’s inner circle to a punk band formed in the waning days of Pinochet regime.

There have been observances of the coup in years past.

But the volume and the source of this year’s eruption of memory distinguished it from the ones in earlier years and decades, according to Ricardo Brodsky, director of the national Museum of Memory and Human Rights.

Whereas in previous years the commemorations were more based in the state and emotionally muted, this time they came from all sectors of civil society.

Matias Torres, the sponsor of fellow Fulbrighter and friend Deb Westin at the University of Chile, also made the point that the language of memory has started to change, too.

What as recently as five years ago was called a “military regime” was now openly labeled “a dictatorship,” he said.

Starting on September 2, Dunreith and I worked to attend at least one event per day.

We largely achieved our goal, and we only attended a smidgen of what was available here in Santiago, let alone throughout the planet’s longest country.

We saw and heard things we are not likely soon to forget.

Like the hundreds of relatives of disappeared sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, nieces and nephews who gathered at Villa Grimaldi, the former restaurant turned torture center turned peace park, stood and held black and white photographs of their loved ones aloft while a sturdy woman near the front of the pavilion took what amounted to a roll call.

Female comrades who have been disappeared and detained, she called.

Presente.

Present.

Former president, current presidential candidate and Villa Grimaldi survivor Michelle Bachelet was there in the front row, standing alongside her mother, Angela Jeria, who was also detained and tortured there.

People weeping at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights during the readings of the stories of their loved ones.

The lighting of candles at a vigil held by the Communist Party at the National Stadium.

This disgorging of memory has had the effect of what many said the Truth and Reconciliation Commission did in Sotuh Africa. It broke through the layers of ignorance and denial.

The emotional aftermath from this information is still settling in for many Chileans

Just last week, Don Roberto, a lifetime resident of Melipilla and a longtime government employee there, explained that many people in the area worked on farms and got their information from the patron.

We saw things on the television that we didn’t know were happening at the time, he said.

The ability to know what is taking place depends on accurate and full information that was all too short supply during the dictatorship, especially from many organs of the press. The powerful film El Diario of Augustin tells the story of El Mercurio´s being funded by the United States government and actively collaborating with the dictatorship.

TRANSPARENCY

In order to boost citizen’s ability to know what is going in the country, elected leaders passed a landmark Transparency Law that then-President Michelle Bachelet signed iin 2009.

This is the subject of my research investigation that I began in earnest this path month.

In many ways, it is an impressive piece of legislation that also has the accompanying infrastructure of a council.

More than 1,000 data sets are available on the nation´s data portal, for instance, and transparency gure Moises Sanchez said the framework is among the best in the continent.

But, as with just about anything significant in life, the proverbial devil is in the details.

Thus far, they don’t tell a very promising story.

Few media outlets appear to be using the law to gather material for hard-hitting stories. (Non-profit outfit CIPER is a notable exception.)

Waldo Carrasso, who now heads the libraries in the municipality of Providencia, worked in Public Information when the law came into effect.

He expected a flood of requests from journalists.

That didn´t happen.

I also learned that the government refused to release emails about public business written on public accounts when requested to do so by Melipilla Mayor Mario Gebauer and lawyer Carlo Gutierrez.

They engaged in a fight that eventually went to the Supreme Court, but lost.

So, too, did Ciudadano Inteligente, a pro-transparency group that issued a similar request.

And President Sebastian Pinera tried to replace the members of the Transparency Council who supported the release of such material.

The struggle for public information continues, and is also being waged by a small, but growing, community of hackers who write code as a means to more quickly and on an ongoing basis secure large volumes of public data.

CELEBRATING FIESTAS PATRIAS AT THE FONDAS

The public turned out in great numbers during the week of September 18, the official day of Chilean Independence.

The celebrations last far more than a day.

Everything shut down for the Wednesday and Thursday of that week.

People either go home to celebrate with family and/or to attend the many fondas, or festivals.

These are not events that I would normally frequent in the U.S., however, because we are here, I went to four of them. To four of them.

Each had its own flavor.

Rodeo was the dominant feature of the fonda at Parque Alberto Hurtado, while the sneaky strong terremoto drink stayed with me long after I left Parque O´Higgins.

With its organic foods, higher prices and vendors accepting credit cards, the Providencia event felt like the Whole Foods of fondas, and the Nunoa event featured a hustling anticucho cook named Patricio who asked me to purchase a couple of beers for him in exchange for my getting a skewer of grilled beef and sausage.

Together, the fondas gave me a collective impression of the importance of those days to Chileans as well as of the staggering volume of kitsch that is sold at such events around the world.

Many anticuchos, parties, piscos and a terremoto later, I returned to the university, and life started to resume what has already become a normal rhythm.

I first applied to the Fulbright program in 2000.

I was rejected that time, as well as in two subsequent attempts.

Realizing that success is a dream come true.

It´s even more so because we sold our house and put ourselves out into the world.

The events of September confirm the wisdom of our decision.

I can’t wait to see what October brings.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 61: Transparency Troubles in Chile

I wrote the other day about my ongoing project about the impact of the 2009 Transparency Law on investigative journalism here in Chile.

I mentioned in that post that transparency guru Moises Sanchez, who works in the area of open government with countries throughout the continent, believes that the law and accompanying infrastructure of a Transparency Council that investigates and decides on each claim is, with Mexico, among the best in the continent.

Since then I’ve reached out to investigative non-profit outfit CIPER, a stalwart organization that has broken many stories of national impact and participated in international collaborations with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

As it turns out, I also received an invitation that I passed onto my students from CIPER to attend a weeklong workshop toward the end of next month.

Among the first topics: how to file a request under the Transparency Act.

In a positive development on that point, I  heard from my student Doren Lowry that the 20 days since he submitted his request for data has passed, and that he’s going to inquire as to the status of his letter.

More fundamentally, I’ve come with more and more certainty  to believe that it is important to expand my focus beyond a strict look at a particular journalistic outlet, or even the field itself, to get a broader, more textured understanding of how the issue of transparency  is playing out here.

As a result, I contacted Ciudadano Inteligente, a non-profit organization committed to principles of transparency and open government.  The organization, along with two others, has been involved in a lawsuit around the right of citizens to have access to emails written by public officials on their work accounts.

This is an important issue as the Transparency Council and  civil society groups-but not, notably, media outlets-tussle with the government over the rights and limits of the public to have access to what the government that they are funding is doing.

There is historical resonance, too, as Chile continues to wrestle with its wounded past. The society was far from open before the Pinochet dictatorship, and, during his 17-year reign, brutality, information control, and silence were integral and related parts of a ruling method.

The lawsuit builds on the legal foundation that Mario Gebauer, the mayor of Melipilla with whom we spent a number of hours and had lunch yesterday, attempted to establish.

The year following the devastating earthquake of Feburary 27, 2010, Gebauer asked for the emails between Interior Subsecretary Rodrigo Ubilla, and the provincial government of Melipilla about the distribution of funds for reconstruction for the earthquake. (In an analogue to Los Angeles City and County, Melipilla is both a city and a province.)

The government refused to provide the requested documents, citing privacy and confidentiality concerns of the employees, even though they were acting in their public capacity.

The judicial branch ultimately accepted the government’s arguments, and no emails were released.

There was a certain irony in the timing of our meeting with Gebauer.

Today our students heard from David Donald, data editor of the Center for Public Integrity, spoke about an analysis that he helped reporter and friend Kate Golden of Wisconsin Watch of Gov. Scott Walker’s emails.

The number of emails was so copious, David said, that he devised a random sample to get a representative understanding of what the emails said.

Moreover, as Lewis Maltby wrote in Can They Do That, in the United States employers have the right to look at work and private email activity that is done during work time, and even after hours if it is conducted on a work computer.

The Chilean court’s decision is troubling enough.

Yet what is more so is that the government is considering legislation that would place official limits on the public’s ability to receive email from their officials, according to Carlos Gutierrez, a lawyer for the community of Melipilla.

I’ll be looking more into this and report on what I find.

It’s too early for me to render a conclusive judgment.

But a picture is rapidly emerging of an acquiescent press, the majority of which is neither trying to access the rights they have nor to contest the erosion of those freedoms, and of a society whose progressive promises have not yet been with an openness commensurate with those lofty ideals.