Keeping or sharing information from / with the Public?

During the last few weeks of september, state sectary Mansveld of Infrastructure had a though call to make in regards to releasing certain information about the management of wholly-owned state subsidiary ProRail to the public. On september 15th Mansveld announced that according to independent research ProRail, responsible for the maintenance of the Dutch railway system, would be 475 million euro's short of the needed budget for the realization of projects between 2018 and 2028.

State Secretary Mansveld; source: bnr.nl

A few days later a more severe image was reported by the Telegraaf, that of a big unimaginable mess in the financial administration and accountancy of the subsidiary. Later, Mansfield declined these remarks and states that there were no signals of financial chaos within the subsidiary. However, when the parliament asked to see additional documents before an upcoming debate, such as a the minutes of a meeting discussing the critical report, Mansveld declined to share these with them. Unfortunately for Mansveld the Telegraaf was able to retrieve these documents themselves and made them public on the morning before the debate. Because the documents had then been publicly published, Mansveld then decided to send these same documents to the parliament in the afternoon while previously hesitating to share them. In the end the debate ran off with a fizzle, demanding Mansveld to provide the parliament with even more information.

The above case present a nice opportunity to look at how and when Public Relation actors decide on which information to share at what time. In this case, the state secretary first decided not to share information with the public. However, when she got presented by the fact that a newspaper publicized the requested information, she eventually shared it as well. Additionally, the timing at which the Telegraaf published the requested information was also curious. While the request for information came roughly a week before the debate, the Telegraaf decided to publish the information on the morning of the debate itself, putting the state secretary in a though position.

What do you think of the way state secretary Mansveld handled the situation? Would you have released the information earlier or do you think she made a good decision by keeping the information behind, knowing what was written inside of the reports? Also, what do you think of the peculiar way in which the Telegraaf published the requested information? Do you think they deliberately published it that morning or did they really only just got access to the information around that time? What do you think of the way in which the newspaper functioned as some sort of watch dog, maybe doing what the state secretary should have done herself?

- Marc Dols