New Zealand has slipped down the 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index and is now the fourth-least corrupt country after usually being in the top three of the 167 countries ranked last year.
It is the second consecutive drop after falling from No 1 in 2013 to No 2 in 2014.
The implication from the latest slide is New Zealand's public sector is the most corrupt it has been in nearly 20 years, although we still rate highly compared to other countries.
Denmark is rated first, followed by Finland and Sweden, meaning we are ahead of most of our major trading partners, including Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
While this is still something to be proud of, there are some worrying aspects to the report.
Politicians, journalists and the Public Service Association are also concerned with how the Official Information Act is working and its role in New Zealand's lowest dip in the index ratings since 1998.
This week, the head of the Otago Regional Council defended the organisation's stance on charging for official information requests, despite being out of step with most southern councils and official guidance.
Journalists who make requests for official information from government agencies are used to lengthy delays and lots of blacked-out pages.
Hefty invoices, like the $651 estimate received by a business journalist for an Official Information Act request to the Reserve Bank, are much rarer.
New Zealanders are reliant on their access to information as part of an open and transparent government.
Apart from access to official information, there are other things which have happened in the past year to cause some disquiet.
Included is the Oravida scandal when then-justice minister Judith Collins had dinner with bosses of the New Zealand milk company, at which her husband was a director, on a taxpayer-funded trip to China.
lso, $11.5million of taxpayer money was spent on a single Saudi Arabian farm, including sending 900 pregnant breeding ewes to a disgruntled Saudi farmer.
When the Government paired with SkyCity to build a convention centre in Auckland, questions were raised about how close the relationship was between the Prime Minister and SkyCity.
Of course, these issues are the big picture with many smaller - and less public - matters going undetected without someone stumbling upon information and asking for an official explanation.
ORC chairman Stephen Woodhead said he was comfortable with the ORC's policy, which offers just 30 minutes' free work by staff when responding to official information requests. Ratepayers should be less than comfortable.
The Reserve Bank's stance has prompted a warning of a change in culture around the OIA being under way.
Charging everybody for OIA requests may become widely adopted by officials trying to keep secret some decisions made by their publicly-funded organisation.
Government ministers and elected councillors often hide behind their paid staff in refusing to release details of why decisions have been made.
A reluctance to pay for information will play right into the hands of those elected officials.
It cannot be allowed to happen.
For New Zealand to return to the top echelon, there needs to be an ease of freedom to information someone may not want released.
Our politicians need to become more amenable to providing information, even at personal expense.
And New Zealanders, in general, need to continue to call to account their elected representatives.
New Zealand's ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption in December last year will mean nothing if information continues to be held and politicians, and their departments, remain above those who elect and pay them.
