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.

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.

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,

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.

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.

(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.

Faulkner (and Bligh) will adopt these suggestions about the same time that Iraq is a stable democracy.

Tis a can of worms which when opened is likely to benefit the private sector at the expense of the public sector.