The government's business is the people's business. The record of that business belongs to the public. That is why the government needs to keep good records and the records need to be properly sorted, stored and then released after a period of time.
Take the current row over what took place between the chief executive, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, and the president of the Legislative Council, Tsang Yok-sing. The latter triggered a political storm by saying he would be willing to step down as president of the legislature in order to vote in favour of the government's proposed electoral reform package, if his vote was needed to pass the measure. Later, in a meeting with legislators from the democratic camp, he said the chief executive had personally urged him to cast the vote, saying he needn't resign as president to do so.
The chief executive categorically denied he said that to Tsang Yok-sing, who then said the chief executive did not press him - but officials had contacted him on the matter. The 'who said what' spat may be revived now that the lacklustre legislative by-elections are over and the focus is back on constitutional reform.
One perspective on this controversy concerns the record of meetings and conversations of government business. The chief executive is the political head of Hong Kong; a record is kept of anyone visiting him and of calls made to his office. There should be established procedures to note down conversations of a working nature between the chief executive and anyone else. Such procedures are common in almost all government administrations to keep a record of the people's business, to be released one day as part of the public archive. Archival laws usually make it clear that an individual official must keep and maintain records as part of good governance, then pass the records to the archival body for storage, compilation and eventual release.
So, if any meeting or telephone conversation took place between the two Tsangs, it should have been jotted down by someone in the Chief Executive's Office. As for the officials who supposedly spoke to Tsang Yok-sing about the reform package, they, too, should have kept a record of any meetings or conversations. After all, meetings between government officials and legislators clearly qualify as work. Indeed, if there was a decision among officials that they should meet the president of the legislature on such an important matter, there should be a record of internal discussions about whom should approach him and what the discussion should be about. After a meeting, there should also be a record of the meeting itself.
Such procedures are standard for most governments. Hong Kong's has a set of internal administrative guidelines, but it is exceptional in that it has no archival legislation to govern the management of records as a matter of legal duty. The mainland and Macau have such a law, as do most countries. One would be hard-pressed to find a respectable jurisdiction that doesn't have an archives law.