Dr David Solomon, a former journalist and barrister who’s long had a big interest in this area, has released a sweeping report to the Queensland Government on reforms to freedom of information and fostering a culture of open government. Significant recommendations include reducing the cabinet secrecy provisions from 30 to 10 years, and 3 years for cabinet briefs, the release of a version of the cabinet agenda, and bringing state owned enterprises under FOI provisions. Solomon was chair of EARC in the early 90s (the Electoral and Administrative Reform Commission established subsequent to the Fitzgerald reforms), and understands well the need not just to widen access to government documents and data but to bring about a cultural shift in how politicians and the public service go about their business. The full report can be read here.
I hope that federal Special Minister of State Senator John Faulkner reads it, as the Rudd government also needs to act in this area.
As always the Devil will be in the detail. Commercial-in-confidence, competition between government and private and so on.
Tis a can of worms which when opened is likely to benefit the private sector at the expense of the public sector.
Have you had a chance to look through the report, wpd? I haven’t yet, but I’m hoping that Solomon has addressed some of these concerns.
Ah, FOI. Something that all oppositions want to liberalise, and all governments want to restrict.
Faulkner (and Bligh) will adopt these suggestions about the same time that Iraq is a stable democracy.
I’m not so sure about that, dd. I think Bligh has two powerful incentives:
(a) she’s already hung her hat on openness and commissioned the report;
(b) I think she wants to use this as her own personal instrument to mould the public sector to her will.
Kim, I haven’t yet. But I will be more interested in the Government’s response which is promised in the next two months.
Will the public sector be required to expose its dirty washing to the public gaze? Will the public sector be required to generate info on its dirty washing? If there is no requirement to generate such info, what will be the long term impact on prudent management?
Will public Universities be required to ’show all’ while the private universities sweep the dirt under the carpet?
There is a downside to FOI for the public sector but it is not widely understood. Why should one sector be transparent and the other not? And so on.
I have to be frank and say that I was quite glad to be leaving as FOI was coming in.
I had up to seven layers below me and one or two between me and the minister, depending on how you counted them. Advice could also be directed towards other directorates or any of the 18 committees I was part of.
So I did a lot of rewriting, because the people with the expertise to provide advice seldom had much of a clue about the target for the advice, what they needed and how they processed information.
So the advice you wrote was shaped often for the consumption of a particular person. As such you could often be quite frank and direct, based on shared understandings. Or diplomatic, with a few subtle testers, or whatever.
The point I’m making is that the advice you gave was written for particular consumption by real live human beings, not for general consumption. If you had to work in a potential goldfish bowl, with people who don’t necessarily share the same perspectives and values able to get on the meeja and twist what you were saying without you having any recourse to a reply or defence, then formal advice was going to be quite anodyne and far less useful to the recipients.
Just remember that people dealing with government, or making FOI requests, are not always on the side of the angels.
I could envisage two streams of communication, one for the official files, and an impermanent one (phone calls, yellow stickers, or a detachable covering note) that carried the important bits.
Anyway I was really glad to be going.
“one for the official files, and an impermanent one (phone calls, yellow stickers, or a detachable covering note) that carried the important bits”.
Exactly. And no emails either.
It’s crazy that public schools’ suspension and exclusion rates are on the public record but private schools suspension and exclusion rates remain secrets even though they receive substantial public funds.
How easy is it for journalist to get a cheap headline at a public school expense? And it happens all the time.
As for public hospitals and their private counterparts and the info they are forced or choose to generate … That’s another story,
And thats essentially what the Howard government was accused of – making sure that they never heard the advice they didn’t want to hear. I think there are problems with what is reasonably confidential information being released within the expected lifetime of a government (say 10-15 years) as it will discourage governments asking for information they think they may not like.
That being said, there is also a problem with governments selectively releasing advice for political purposes. So perhaps if they want to release information submitted to cabinet publicly they should be compelled to release all other relevant advice on the topic.
wpd – agreed it seems reasonable that private schools and hospitals who receive substantial public funding should be required to follow similar disclosure requirements.