Are you scared yet?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's cabinet is planning to renew its government's online image by significantly reducing the number of federal websites and creating tools and instructions to monitor social media and engage with the public, says a leaked internal document...Clement had in fact told a technology conference in November that his plan was to consolidate the government's web presence from about 1,500 to six or fewer websites.

Wow.  Clement claims that this will make it easier for the public to find information.  Really?  Six or fewer sites covering what 1,500 currently do?  Integrated services?  This is not like sharing IT services.  Each department has a specific mandate, a specific set of goals.  How do you consolidate their messages and who will do this?

Communications teams in departments work with specialists within the department who are very familiar with current events affecting departmental issues, public issues as relate to the department, how the department best serves the public, what resources it offers, and what reports it generates – among many other things.  That is why each department has its own website and its own communications team.

So how can the thousands of public issues now addressed by departmental websites possibly be presented in an open, user-friendly fashion for the public?  And who will decide for all the departments what information will be included?  Who will decide what issues should take priority in presentation?  Who signs off on the final draft of such communications? 

(British Columbia Freedom of Information and Privacy Association’s) executive director, Vincent Gogolek, said he has nothing against improving web pages and making them more efficient but suggested that, based on recent cases of some political speeches and inconvenient information disappearing from federal websites, Harper's main goal was to control access to information and messaging. For example, he noted that Transport Canada had removed references to the environment from a webpage explaining the Navigable Waters Protection Act after it tabled legislation last fall to limit the law's scope to a fraction of bodies of water across the country.

A valid concern, one we should all share.  And we should be pretty angry.  The public service is paid by us and is supposed to work for us.  If it is further muzzled through such an abominable move to control messaging, how can it inform us of how our money is being spent, what reports and research tell us about our safety issues, our economy, our country’s finances, our demographics, our rights?  How can it tell us how departments are performing and how public servants are performing?  

(Clement's director of communications, Andrea Mandel-Campbell) dismissed the association's concerns about disappearing information as a misunderstanding of the plan. She said the entire strategy was still being finalized, following discussions with the private sector and other jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand and British Columbia…

Discussions with the private sector?  Why the private sector?  Maybe it’s for consultation on web design, but considering how the private sector has been repeatedly invited to advise on shaping legislation that massively affects the public while serving a few private interests, I doubt it’s because harper and clement just can’t find trained public servants with tech knowledge.

(Gogolek) also expressed concerns about social media monitoring or profiling, that he suggested could be used to identify critics.

Does anyone even have to explain why this is a very real concern?

So, the two-in-one plan: control the message (all messages) and identify and punish any who try to speak truth.