The central government’s commitment to freedom of information only applies to the realm of voluntarily disclosed information. (Photo : Getty Images)
A local government official in the southern Chinese province of Hainan has received disciplinary action for his failure to update the Danzhou Municipal Bureau of Commerce with public reports on the accomplishments of the bureau's heads and civil servants.
In keeping with the central government's primacy for information transparency, the bureau's director Dong Haifeng was punished with an administrative sanction and a warning on his failure to have his bureau's website updated, the Global Times reported.
The sanction came after the website failed the evaluation of the State Council, which conducts checks on all government websites across China. Sixth Tone reported that the bureau failed to submit its public reports, which are supposedly required for uploading on a bi-weekly basis.
Apart from the punishment given to Dong, a temporary employee directly tasked for the updates has been laid off. The bureau's website has since been closed following the State Council's "disqualified" rating, with all its contents transferred to the Hainan provincial government website.
The importance of updating government websites is indicative of the central government's mission to enable the public to engage in government affairs. However, a key hindrance to that goal, the first initiatives of which date back to 2008, has been the excess of badly-maintained government websites.
While the reprimanding of the Hainan Province official certainly represents progress on the part of the central government's commitment to freedom of information, it only applies to the realm of voluntarily disclosed information. Citizens virtually have no rights to request for disclosure of certain information.
Nonetheless, with several other government websites that failed the State Council's evaluation whose heads have yet to be punished, several users, specifically within Shanxi and Yunnan Provinces, would have to keep their frustrations a little bit longer until proper action is taken.
With 83 percent in a 2013 survey of 3,000 people saying that officials who fail to update government websites must be held accountable, alongside 74 percent who say that the government's efforts to freedom of information are problematic, government units are certainly compelled to take action.
