It isn’t rocket science. It isn’t brain surgery. Collaboration, while challenging, is not impossible. But it does require the political will and major effort to achieve the possible. Otherwise, like the word transparency and its equally attractive twin, accountability, calls for collaboration and cooperation are meaningless unless they are translated into demonstrable and meaningful action.It falls to those who make the calls to lead the way. They have the power to make it happen. The proposed new Tourism Authority might have been a good place to begin. It may still be.A quick review of recent events reveals the anatomy of the problem. The Minister meets with staff here to share the news. They are about to be made redundant but they can apply for jobs with the new Authority but there are no guarantees, failing which work will be found for them elsewhere in the civil service: like where, one is tempted to ask, the Post Office for instance? Finance? Immigration? But let’s not go there. Yet. Voluntary retirement and/or redundancy is presumably also an option. I use the word “presumably” advisedly, because we don’t know all the facts. Word quickly leaked out of the Minister’s decision (and that surely was no surprise, to anyone: as they say, even Stevie Wonder would have seen that happening) as the Minister was jetting off to New York to inform the staff there.There is no question that the Minister owed the staff an explanation first. They are the people who will be most affected. But once the news was out there on the street the general public could have been informed as to what was going on, and what’s planned. It is not news that the Government is trying to deliver on one of its key campaign commitments: the establishment of a Tourism Authority. It has after all been seven months in the making and it is also the reason, or one of the key reasons, why the Legislature is coming back for an extraordinary sitting in September.One presumes that by this stage the Government knows what the enabling legislation will look to achieve, if indeed the Act is not already in final form. One also presumes that by now all necessary i’s and t’s have been dotted and crossed, including talks not just with individual staff but their union; although there is some indication that has yet to occur.We are left to presume a lot because we just don’t know. We don’t know because they won’t tell us. Wait until we reconvene on the Hill, we are told, when the details will emerge. That’s weeks away and the Bill is not likely to be debated until at least a week, possibly two weeks, after it has been tabled.If nature abhors a vacuum, just look at what happens in politics. The partisans pile on and the critics quickly weigh in. The facts? There are few. Suspicions are cultivated and met with silence. Positions soon harden. There are claims and counter-claims of deceit and dishonesty; accusations and counter-accusations of misguidedness and maliciousness. None of it helpful, and hardly conducive to careful examination and debate of what’s proposed and what’s intended to improve a vital but failing industry of concern to everyone in Bermuda.It is difficult, if not impossible to make an evaluation without knowing for instance:* How the Authority will be funded?* How it will be controlled and by whom?* What the relationship will be with Government? And the Minister?* Just what sort of legal entity it will be.The devil, my friends, is in the detail. Always.Yet we have been reduced to waiting until the Bill is tabled. If I didn’t know better I would say that the system seems designed to limit, not encourage public participation. I do know better. It was designed that way, but many, many years ago; a different era and a different time. It’s time to change, to take advantage of modern technology and a more sophisticated general public: post your Bills, even drafts, for review, comment and discussion. Share the principles, the thoughts and the aims embodied in the legislation. Create opportunities for collaboration.Sure, there is some risk of early criticism. There always is. Partisans will always seek to exploit for advantage. But there is also every chance the political culture around will start to change and that we will soon find that constructive criticism is not only forthcoming but useful; and empty vessels will be exposed for who and what they are.Nothing beats a failure but a try. It is also lunacy to continue doing things the same old way and expect different results.PS: Don’t get me going on the appointment of the new Commissioner of Education and the positioning of Government on that one. I am out of space for this week.n Share your views on The Royal Gazette website or write jbarritt@ibl.bm.