De­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­eties are based on the pub­lic’s right to in­for­ma­tion to al­low cit­i­zens to come to an opin­ion and make in­formed judge­ments. The cu­mu­la­tive ef­fect of these in­di­vid­ual judge­ments by cit­i­zens over time shapes pub­lic opin­ion. There is al­ways the ten­den­cy by those who con­trol the levers of pow­er to “man­age” in­for­ma­tion and by so do­ing in­flu­ence to present those in­volved in the best light. Pub­lic opin­ion is the stock in trade of all who hold of­fice as trust, once lost, is very hard to re­build, whether in the pub­lic or pri­vate sec­tor.

It is im­por­tant then that the pub­lic has ac­cess to the facts which will al­low them to draw their con­clu­sions. The facts ought to be pre­sent­ed clear­ly, con­cise­ly, co­her­ent­ly and com­plete­ly. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, facts may not al­ways be known quick­ly as da­ta is miss­ing and can on­ly be cleared up in the full­ness of time. What is dis­closed, the time­line of events and the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the par­ties mak­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion will af­fect how cit­i­zens form their opin­ions. Each per­son has their bi­as­es which will help shape their in­ter­pre­ta­tions.

There have been sev­er­al key events in re­cent times that gen­er­at­ed con­tro­ver­sy and con­cern over the ac­tions of pub­lic of­fi­cials in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. First was the div­ing dis­as­ter as­so­ci­at­ed with Paria, a state en­ter­prise which re­sult­ed in four deaths, and a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry where mil­lions were spent to as­cer­tain the truth.

Next was a cy­ber­at­tack at TSTT for which a "probe" has been or­dered but its re­sults are some months away. Cur­rent­ly, we are still con­front­ed with the on­go­ing ef­forts to ad­dress an oil spill for which many of the facts are still un­known.

There are al­ways at least two sides to every sto­ry. In the three ex­am­ples cit­ed, there are mul­ti­ple sides.

Last Mon­day’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee raised se­ri­ous ques­tions on the ad­e­qua­cy of the in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion process and the TSTT Board's role in man­ag­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the pub­lic. No one will dis­agree with the TSTT’s of­fi­cials who con­ced­ed that the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to the pub­lic was nei­ther time­ly nor ac­cu­rate and that they should have done a bet­ter job. Of greater con­cern was the al­le­ga­tion by the for­mer CEO that the board de­lib­er­ate­ly un­der-in­formed the pub­lic. To pro­tect whom? The de­mand for con­fi­den­tial da­ta of af­fect­ed cus­tomers lends weight to the idea that TSTT’s Board did not un­der­stand its role or its du­ty to the pub­lic.

Ear­ly iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is a key to de­ter­min­ing ap­pro­pri­ate re­spons­es. In TSTT’s case, the first cy­ber­at­tack took place on Oc­to­ber 3, not Oc­to­ber 9 as first re­port­ed. Sim­i­lar­ly, it seems strange that so much da­ta on the ori­gins of the ves­sels in­volved in the oil spill should be avail­able on so­cial me­dia with­out sim­i­lar in­for­ma­tion be­ing dis­closed by the rel­e­vant min­istries. Fur­ther, the spill of an oil-like sub­stance was first de­tect­ed on Feb­ru­ary 7. But this” sub­stance” was on­ly con­firmed as “in­ter­me­di­ate fu­el oil” by a press re­lease from the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries on Feb­ru­ary 23, thir­teen days lat­er.

These three in­ci­dents have a com­mon thread and that is the in­flu­ence of the State. All re­quired clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the pub­lic and time­ly re­spons­es to clar­i­fy what was at stake and what was done to pro­tect the pub­lic in­ter­est. Miss­ing in every in­stance are trans­paren­cy, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, own­er­ship and ul­ti­mate­ly, lead­er­ship.