Introduction

This report provides statistics on compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (2021 Revision) in the Cayman Islands Public Sector. It places the 2021 FOI outcomes and activities in the context of the trends and results since 2009, when the FOI Act came into effect.

The FOI Act promotes openness and accountability by creating a general right of access, balanced by exemptions for specific reasons, consistent with the system of constitutional democracy in the Cayman Islands.

Methodology

This report was compiled by the Office of the Ombudsman using aggregated statistics from the Cayman Islands Government’s central tracking system known as JADE, which was recently upgraded. Where needed, these figures were augmented, verified and corrected against the compliance reports on FOI activity received from each individual public authority.

JADE is owned and maintained by the Cabinet Office, and we are grateful to the Information

Rights Unit of the Cabinet Office, and to the many FOI Information Managers around the Public Sector who implement the FOI Act on a daily basis, for providing the raw data for this report. 

As in previous years, there are no reliable figures for internal reviews conducted during the year, as they continue to be under-reported in the tracking system. Therefore, we are unable to report on this item.

The number of appeals to the Ombudsman and their outcomes were reported in the 2021 Annual Report of the Office of the Ombudsman and have not been duplicated here.