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Failing a test?
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Posted on May 03 2009
On April 27, 2009, Saipan Tribune ran an article stating that nearly half of CNMI government agencies flunked an Open Government Act test. The agency that gave their document right away was Northern Marianas College, but the first to flunk was the Public School System. I thought that the first to flunk would be the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. In addition, the article states that “only 12 agencies gave the document within 10 days and three took longer than 10 days but only one asked for an extension and two had excuses for their delays.” This tells me that the agencies that gave their documents within 10 days knew what the law was and the penalties if not followed, and the fact that only half of the agencies know what they are doing and what the law says is no surprise to me. I think that the agencies that gave their documents late did not care about what the law has to say.
The Saipan Tribune’s opinion meter asked, “On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest, how would you rate the CNMI government’s compliance with the open government?” I gave a rating of 2 because of the small number of responsible agencies that gave their documents within 10 days and passed the test.
The CNMI government is clearly not an open government because there are so many secrets that go around it. A strong, good government is characterized by an open government, and when there is an open government there is clearly citizen participation. Sadly, we do not have this in our CNMI government.
[B]Mae Angelie Ito[/B] [I]Koblerville, Saipan[/I]
