Consultation

All worthy projects, but perhaps an unbalanced focus on web 2.0 tools themselves, and not enough on promoting an open government culture or addressing the risk averse public sector culture which prevents the sharing of much information in the first place - which is part of your terms of reference. I'd like to propose a project to shift the risk, and thus shift the culture. The decision-makers faced with access to information requests daily (FOI officers, privacy officers, front desk staff, line managers, whoever answers the phone that day ...) are often over-worked and under-resourced. The easiest answer is to say "no, because of the Privacy Act". They know their boss will back them up for this risk-averse response, more so than if they actually examined their legal position in more detail, which takes time, is frustrating and complex, and risks getting it wrong. As I have suggested in my submission on the Issues Paper, one solution is to make that decision-making task less complex; not by weakening access to information laws/rules, but by offering decision support tools to staff. The Project Fund could be used to commission a prototype 'map' of the FOI/privacy/secrecy legislation covering access to information requests for one or more jurisdictions (let's start with the Commonwealth), with the map generating a series of question-and-answer points on a decision 'tree'/flowchart, to help quickly guide the user towards an end answer, covering their circumstances, for the question: "Can we disclose this?" Imagine the shift in attitude if that tool were also made public - the person asking for the information can also quickly see what 'the law' says about their request! Now the risk has shifted too - the public servant risks saying 'no' when everyone can see the answer should be 'yes'. That would truly create an open government, pro-(appropriate) disclosure culture. Declaration: I would hope to work on such a project (and thus financially benefit), as our firm has much of the specialised privacy content that would be one input into the 'map'. However I have been suggesting this idea since 2003, before I was a consultant and thus in a position to benefit personally from it.