At Sunday’s community meeting a number of people made comments about the Council being secretive and about the difficulties of finding information. While I personally feel these comments were unfair and that many people had not looked very hard, I think that we can manage our information access better.
Our Council, like most, has a commitment to be ‘open and accountable.’ However, does this go much past having a register of how Councillors voted on issues?
Open government is the political idea which holds that the business of government should be opened at all levels to effective public scrutiny and oversight. Open government is widely seen to be a key hallmark of contemporary democratic practice. (Thanks Wiki).
Along with providing more access to data goes a corresponding concern for protecting citizens' privacy so they are not exposed to "adverse consequences, retribution or negative repercussions".
On his first full day in office, President Obama issued an Executive Order and several memoranda on transparency and participation in the Federal Government. “My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government,” Obama indicated. “The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.” He added: “In the face of doubt, openness prevails. Agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government.”
Should we be actively putting more of our information on- line: building application details, legal challenges, policy documents, financials, SAT hearings, restaurant health inspection data, clinic attendance numbers, street tree and park bench locations and so on, to a much greater degree?
A key point is putting the information out there, even if we don’t know how someone could use it.
The US lead the way with FOI legislation, known as ‘sunshine laws’. Australia followed suit in 1982 and WA in 1992. This is good, but really, if we are going to give away information under FOI why not be pro- active and get it out there anyway?
There is a very good example of E-Gov openness at data.gov
Can we do this better? Have your say by clicking on “Comments” below.
2 comments:
Interesting comments.
Pete asks the question, should there be more information online
so it is readily available, as part of being 'open and accountable'?
Should KPI's (key performance indicators) of Council staff be
so framed and also online .... like what questions are being asked
by the community and how long does it take to get an answer ...
this sort of material could be automatic in a well organised
records system in an open setting.
And budgets could be in real time ... showing actual expenditure
to date compared to what was allocated for a set of purposes.
All this again could be automatic and online.
Going further, is there a good reason why simple things like
maintenance programs and other works are not clearly listed
online, showing start dates etc, with the ability for the community
to ensure that the tasks are done when programmed?
Sincerely
Don
Donald YATES
Councillor of Bassendean
08 9379 9479
You think the American government would be so open about the operations at area 51 or the locations of the nuclear weapons? I think not. There is a difference between South Perth Local Government and the American Government.
The idea of open and accountable government is not an information sharing exercise. It's more about those who represent the community being accountable and open about what actions they have done are doing.
That being said I would love to see full government data at all levels available to the public. At the end of the day it's our money being spent shouldn't we clearly see where it is being spent?
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