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Access to Government Information – Time to Ask the Big Questions

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Mount Ranier 046 There are times when it may seem that a glacier moves faster than change in the public service. I declare an interest – I spent six years in the Federal Department of Finance in the late 80s and early 1990s at a time when ‘significant’ changes were made to the Federal Government’s budget processes. They were ‘relatively’ fast moving times as the notion of public service invincibility was not only challenged but completely overturned and commercial management and accounting concepts introduced to the Service.

 

Despite enormous reforms within the public service over the past 20 years, under Governments of both political persuasion, it is undoubtedly true that the essential relationship between Government and citizens remains one defined more often by history than deliberate policy choice.

Power is a difficult subject to define and discuss without confronting numerous assumptions concerning how power is obtained, maintained and exercised. Unquestionably there are sensitivities among many public servants when it comes to this discussion as they are constrained by their obligation to serve the elected Government and by the hierarchical management structures that essentially define the public service.

Nevertheless as the holders and creators of volumes of information about the public and issues related to the public it is imperative that the public service be a leading agent for reform and a model of best practice as to how information is created, gathered, collected, stored, shared and utilised.

As digital technologies allow the ever more rapid creation and dissemination of information it is imperative that policies be determined that not only establish the conditions under which citizens can access information but also enable information to be readily accessed and used by those who can add value to that information – including the private sector.

To date most explorations and discussion of the power of Web 2.0 technologies have examined the various capacities of technologies – particularly in terms of the optimal standards that enable the utilisation of information databases held in the public sector. These are important, though I would argue secondary issues in the overall framework of citizen participation in Government. Some trials have been held by the Federal Government to consider the potential for citizens to be more directly engaged in the process of governing. These were brave if primitive efforts to explore the possibilities of existing tools and applications. Federal Government trials conducted earlier this year have shown that the public can be brought into the process of policy making though it remains unclear whether participation was broadly based and whether the process of participation was efficient and substantially aided the objective of better policy outcomes.

There is good reason to believe that the further evolution of information technologies combined with strategies and policies that open the processes of government to real time public participation and that enable policy makers to see and utilise information provided directly by the public could lead to better public policy outcomes. Such processes will challenge many of the assumptions that currently underpin the operation of our public services. Changing the relationships of power between government, citizens and the public sector has the possibility of being truly revolutionary.

It appears the current Federal Government under Ministers Tanner and Ludwig (and former Minister of State John Faulkner) may be the first Government in Australia to seriously address these questions and confront these challenges. It remains to be seen whether a culture of revolutionary change exists or can be founded in the Australian Public Service. Opening up public services will not be achieved by information technologies. As ever they will be enablers. What is ultimately required is a high level determination and conviction – that better public services will be achieved when the public are enabled to be front and centre of the process of service access and delivery.

Simon Edwards, Head of Government Affairs

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