Finding the balance between privacy and transparency is critical. Governing a large public sector university in total secrecy would be contrary to the public interest. Running as a total open book would be reckless. My experience has been everyone involved in university governance essentially agrees with the foregoing statement. That’s where agreement ends. There is little consensus on where that point of balance is to be found.
There is no left or right to where people land on this question. It rather seems more about where one is in terms of authority and control over decision making. The more authority and control one holds, the more they tilt toward enhanced privacy. While publishing an online local news site I have found large agencies like the Vancouver School Board and the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure assert tight control over information flow - limiting who can speak and how much they can say. UBC has a similar process. UBC’s academic mission loosens information flow a little. The tradition of academic freedom mitigates some of the worst aspects of an absolute cone of silence approach. However, those with the power - and absent any voice to the contrary- do push the balance point toward enhanced privacy and limited transparency.
A recent UBC library science dissertation does a close study of the privacy/transparency divide. Darra Hofman’s 2020 study, “Between Knowing and Not Knowing,” delves into this question from the perspective of an archivist. How much and what kind of transparency do we need they ask. Hofman acknowledges “privacy and transparency both can operate to enable negative consequences. Privacy, in its negative form, enables deception and fraud; transparency, in its negative form, enables surveillance, conformity, and control” (p. 298).1 Though focussed on the archives, Hofman has much to say that merits consideration in governance circles.
One particularly relevant conclusion drawn with governance implications focusses on how records are created:
“the public/private dichotomy is central to questions of transparency; the category of ‘public record’ is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. The roles played by transparency – and of records to enact that transparency – are, and likely will remain, an enduring privacy challenge, in part because of the entrenched status of transparency as a democratic value. Transparency, although it might not have been called such, is deeply intertwined with archives and records in two modes: transparency about records creation, management, and use, and transparency through records, with the former enabling the latter. As Duff writes, ‘the legal, administrative, fiscal, or information value of records is dependent upon the degree of trust society places in records as reliable testimony of evidence of the acts they purport to documents’ (1988, 88). A key component therein is transparency about the records, their creation, and the actions taken on them. The public/private dichotomy, then, does not provide a bright line, but a signal, pointing to the likelihood that particular records are likely to be a site of struggle between the values of privacy and democratic transparency” (emphasis added. P. 291)
UBC’s Board of Governors has a history of practices that raise questions about how their records have been produced. The now retired student news site UBC Insiders broke several negative/enhanced privacy stories over its life. One revealed the then practice of email consent voting:
The creation of Policy 92 has brought to light a virtually unknown practice of the Board of Governors: e-mail voting using implicit consent. This is the method by which Policy 92 was passed while the Board had no scheduled meetings.
“When a motion is passed by consent that means nobody opposed, including the students, to not pass that,” explained Bijan Ahmadian, student Board rep. “What happens is that Reny [Kahlon, Board Secretary] sends out the e-mail and says ‘This is a consent item, does anybody want to call a meeting on this?’” If there are no responses received by a set deadline, it is considered to be passed.”
UBC Insiders notes “there is a distinct lack of transparency with e-mail voting. Business conducted outside of meetings via e-mail does not get recorded in agendas or minutes of the board.”
There is strong social pressures against raising objections to consent decisions. Doing so once or twice, especially if a person is new, is tolerated. Raising objections continually as a matter of principle is seriously frowned upon and brings forth subtle (and at times not so subtle) suggestions that one is wasting other people’s time forcing a meeting. To raise an objection to a consent item (whether by email or at an actual meeting) is often received negatively and even at times considered a disruptive act. Consent items at the Board arise from either an executive, a smaller committee of the board, or the senates. The act of asking to discuss these matters then ends up being framed as disrespectful and is thus discouraged. Rather than encouraging a public discussion of the reasons behind decisions, divergent or questioning perspectives are discursively marginalized and framed as disrespectful.
UBC Insiders documented many such descents into enhanced privacy by the UBC Board. One sarcastic entry proclaimed “BREAKING: UBC Board of Governors manages to hold non-secret meeting.” This ‘non-secret’ meeting fell on the heels of a series of private meetings explained in a 2016 Ubyssey story “UBC Board of Governors held another secret meeting yesterday.” As noted in the UBC Insiders’ story then “VP External Philip Steenkamp was on record making the bizarre argument that conference calls didn’t qualify as meetings and thus did not need to be disclosed.” Since then the Board had made some serious progress toward greater transparency. However, whatever gains were made seem to have dissipated somewhat over the course of the pandemic.
Ensuring clear transparent processes for decision making and records keeping is critical for effective governance of a public institution (if one values democratic principles). Part of ensuring this is to encourage real diversity in perspective, to value dissent, and to champion active debate and critique. Board solidarity models, where everyone is expected to shroud their disagreement in private, generates secrecy in governance and undermines public trust. UBC’s Board has gone down this road in the past. The results were not positive or healthy.
When my term begins March 1, 2023, I look forward to ensuring that my deliberations and decisions are transparent and obvious. Part of this includes maintaining a running list of meetings, events, and things, that come my way by virtue of being a governor at UBC. Such meetings and events play some small role in shaping decision making processes, though not the totality of the process.
How an individual makes a decision occurs in the context of who they are, their knowledge and their experiences. The experience I bring to the task plays a large role in how I think about the issues presented to the board. It shapes the kinds of information I consider important or not. Having a diversity of perspectives around the board table deepens and enriches the deliberations by drawing upon an intersection of such experiences. However, this is undermined when people are too similar in life and training or unwilling to publicly express themselves.
Boards form communities of practice in which questioning board practices can be felt as an attack. In this process I can not ignore a lifetime of professional research into how networks of people fashion communities of practice. These practices define meanings and values that become self evident truths beyond question’s pale. As a ‘professional stranger’ I will definitively see things differently and ask questions that may not align with in-house received wisdom.
I offer no magical resolution on where to find the balance between privacy and transparency. What I can do is to commit to pushing towards greater openness and transparency in all processes and record making the board embarks upon. I will be willing to speak and to ask questions. In so doing I acknowledge that the best interests of the university is not found in a one size fits all manual of corporate behaviour or thought.
Hofman, D. (2020). “Between knowing and not knowing” : privacy, transparency and digital records (T). University of British Columbia. Retrieved from https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0391887