The Ombudsman in Hong Kong has expunged most of its public data: even annual reports are not found, with links broken and many reports deleted

Civil rights activists have uploaded the entire historical record of Hong Kong Ombudsman reports to an open-source public repository, with hundreds of reports and indexes now available through GitHub.

All deleted Ombudsman files are now available on a public depository hosted on GitHub

The move comes after the Ombudsman deleted almost all of its investigation and annual reports last week. Under stringent new public access procedures, Ombudsman reports previously freely-available can only be officially viewed in the Ombudsman’s Shun Tak Centre offices by appointment only.

Appointments take around a week to secure and only six hardcopy reports can be viewed at one time. Readers are charged $4 for each page they wish to photocopy in colour (or $2 in black and white).

The entire process is time-consuming and cumbersome, given there is no listed index of documents on the Ombudsman website.

 “Saving too much information will slow computers”

Earlier, the Ombudsman said the deletion was to “streamline” its website, with Ombudsman chief Jack Chan bizarrely claimed the expunging of its public records was to speed up the office IT systems.

“I dare not comment as I am not an IT expert. But my colleagues mentioned that saving too much information will slow computers,” he said.

The Ombudsman’s decision was criticised across Chinese and English media (screenshot HK01, translated by Google Translate)

The move has angered many in society. Even the generally neutral HK01 ran an op-ed headlined: “The Ombudsman shocked 7 million people”

But civil society rallied to restore the public accountability promised by the spirit of the Ombudsman Ordinance, with several new indexes and file repositories now available in English and Chinese. One open-source English version on GitHub can be found here:  https://ombudsman-hk-archive.github.io/

In a response to a complaint about the new rules, the Office of the Ombudsman simply reiterated the new rules. Long-standing Ombudsman Chief Manager Gwenny Tsui, who has worked in that role for at least 13 years, wrote “The Office has no further comments on the relevant matters.”

Viewing Ombudsman reports now requires form-filling and an appointment. Three staff showed this reporter to the viewing room and then waited outside for 30 minutes while the reports were read. The reports, previously available as PDFs on the Ombudsman’s website, can be copied at $2-4 per page.