This is part of the great unaccountability culture that pervades society at the moment.
Under the MyKi debarkle in Victoria they cannot account for over $700M! No documentation, no records. To my knowledge no one has been sacked for this theft of public funds.
The cost-benefit calculations to justify the North-south pipeline and the dubious desal plant are also examples of non-viable propositions made possible by secret decision processes.
We appear to have a crisis of governance all round: Church groups stalking our internet freedom by lobbying both major parties (Notice that internet censorship is about the only thing the Libs *haven't* opposed?), mass corruption due to mega-profitable crime, involvement in very dodgy overseas military ventures with surprisingly little real reason. (911, no! WMDs, no! Regime change...).
Now recently our government deployed our very expensive defence forces overseas to be involved in an illegal war that killed hundreds of thousands of innocents...all on false premises...and they get away with no repercussions at all! Not a single bit of the "evidence for war" turned out to be true, yet we were told it had been reviewed but was too sensitive to be released. We were lied to, and this is apparently perfectly OK!
No wonder we have such scumbags in politics. They know now that there is virtually nothing that the media and public won't let them off the hook for.

Politicians have designed the Privacy Law to free themselves from accountability. Anyone who votes a politician to power consigns his wealth to an untrustworthy operator.

Adam Henry says in his article:

"... increasingly I have come to the conclusion
that archives should be allowed to play a far
greater role in a truly democratic society."

Indeed they should.

Adam Henry has rightly highlighted a major weakness in the system of management of public records with his observation that:

"First, organisations such as [the Australian intelligence
community and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade]
are under no obligation to release all of their documents
to the National Archives. Which documents are simply kept
by these agencies and never acknowledged is therefore
completely unknown to the NAA and the general public.
In essence, they choose which archival documents they will
provide and acknowledge."



I submit that the problem of limited archival accessibility, and the consequent limitation of the freedom of information, is far worse than Adam Henry claims, and that it may have already directly adversly impacted the democratic process itself.



There is a class of records that are intendedly public, and have historically been trumpeted as being so. These include the records relating to both the call, and the actual conduct, of elections, and other records ancillary thereto, like the electoral rolls.

With the advent of the internet, those electoral records have expanded to include what is known as the 'Virtual Tally Room'(VTR), a digital record consisting of a series of publicly accessible web pages that show the progress of the count of votes, commencing on election night and progressively updated over several weeks until the finality of the count in all Divisions has been reached. I wonder whether Adam Henry, as an experienced user of the NAA, thinks it would be expecting too much that an archival record of each such web page, as at each progressive updating, should have in the first instance been kept by the AEC, and subsequently have remained permanently publicly accessible in the NAA?

Even better, could he prove or disprove the availability of such a record?

There is a reason I ask. A clue to it resides here: http://forums.pmc.gov.au/Electoral_Reform_Green_Paper?page=1 , in the second post on this page.

Yes the answer is Yes. FOI does need to be taken seriously - one way to highlight the issue is for the media to publish all cases where access was denied, maybe a blog/forum about FOI and privacy related experiences. That is an idea! Pity I don't have web skills.

FG
Interesing comment you made on the PM&C forum. I wonder if the total enrolments include late enrolments made prior to voting from tardier residents. ie. How long does it take for a new enrolment to show up in the numbers?

This is one typical scenario.
______________________________________________

A number of employees raise concerns about unethical practices, workplace practices and mismanagement issues including misinformation provided to outsiders and members of the public.

Complainants are told reputations are at risk should they continue with the complaints. Many complainants bail out.

One person makes a formal complaint to an external agency about said maladministration and unethical practices.

Person gets letter from external agency advising complaint not upheld.

Person writes back to external agency requesting under FOI the responses to the complaint and documents provided by the accused.

Person is denied access to those documents.

Person writes to Ombudsman requesting access to documents denied under FOI.

Ombudsman forces external agency to release documents provided by the accused.

Person receives documents, only to discover there has not been full disclosure to external agency by the accused and much of the scant information provided was inaccurate and false.

Person writes back to external agency outlining the dishonesty and makes an additional point about lack of original access to documents.

External agency writes back to person advising they have done a review of the complaint and re-opened the investigation. There is a half hearted apology and blame allocated to original contact, lack of resources (which is probably partly true). Blah blah blah.

External agency upholds the original complaint and the accused are issued with an official warning.

The person making the complaint had no viable option but to resign, those responsible were promoted out and some changes made to resolve mismanagement and ethical issues.

Person asked by management if department could count on their silence when leaving the department.

Person declined to answer.

No record of the case or the resulting official warning has ever been officially documented in a public record. No minutes of meetings have ever included the matters raised by personnel. As far as records go the incidents never occurred although thankfully person has a copy of warning sent to accused by external agency also obtained under FOI - which is reassuring to confirm it was not just a figment of their imagination.
_____________________________________________

Last post I promise.

Yes, FOI and access to information is vital if the goals of accountability and transparency is to be achieved. This is a no-brainer - access to information is essential to good democracy.

Many public servants are now bound by security clearances and regular security seminars conducted to remind staff their duty is not only to protect confidential information but to protect the reputation of their department. I thought that was the job of competent and transparent managers not thinly veiled threats to keep mum about matters in the public interest.

There is much work still needed on whistleblower legislation as part of this whole debate.

I certainly agree with the sentiment of the article, but I find the following a little strange:

"For example, those wishing to see such documents could agree not to cite the document in any published materials; they could agree to not disclose any information damaging to Australia's national security; they could even agree not to acknowledge that they had seen the document."

It makes the assumption that the person seeing the document has no ill intentions. If they DO have ill intentions, their agreement would most likely be meaningless - they will do what they want, when they want, regardless of what they have said they will/will not do. Perhaps what is needed is open access to ASIO security clearances, so that we do not need to be employed by intelligence organisations to access sensitive materials. Then we can access sensitive materials, with accountability, to the level of clearance we have been granted. It would be time-consuming and expensive, but if we want the materials that much, then we would be willing to go through the processes. It would not be foolproof, but it would allow freer access to information in a controlled and secure manner.

pelican, in her post of Monday, 28 June 2010 at 11:57:58 PM, asks, in relation to the content of the post to the DPMC Forums pointed to in the link supplied in my post of Monday, 28 June 2010 11:17:19 AM, :

"How long does it take for a new enrolment to show up in the numbers?"

The answer is that it would normally be expected to show up the next working day after lodgement of the application. There might be slightly longer delay around roll close for an election due to pressure of work on electoral Division staff at such a time, but all applications received before roll close will be emplaced upon the rolls printed for the conduct of that election. The Australian Electoral Commissioner, under the provisions of the Commonwealth Electoral Act, is required to certify to that effect. That is why the rolls marked off are called the Certified Lists.

That this in fact happened for the 2007 Federal elections is not in dispute. It is precisely why the very first pages of the VTR showed at those elections, as they should, the numbers of electors enrolled for each Division.

What was NOT shown on the commencing pages of the VTR were figures that should have been known and final before election day, the totals of both pre-poll and postal vote claims for each Division that had been made. The total issues of such votes should thus have been shown on the opening pages of the VTR, and on all subsequent updates thereof, in order to tie down ballot paper accountancy.

Given that characteristically around 5% of names carried on any electoral roll have no vote claimed against them at an election, at no point during the count should it be expected that more vote claims would appear to have been made than there were names enrolled.

Yet that, in a record that has now been removed from public view, the original VTR pages, is what transiently seemed to have occurred in some Divisions in the 2007 Federal elections.

Are they archived?

At first glance it may appear that this pursuit of what should be the archived cached pages of the original publicly viewable VTR for the 2007 Federal elections is a diversion from the matters raised in Adam Henry's article. I contend that it is not, but rather provides a timely illustration of the adverse effect upon the very democratic process itself of what appears to be a culture within Australian public administration of withholding intendedly public and verifiable records from ready accessibility. Indeed, the article by-line bears this contention out.

To make it clear to viewers of this thread exactly what public document has been withdrawn from public view, it is necessary to post some links to posts to a number of now-archived OLO discussions, together with some explanatory notes. Sorry if it is all tedious.

Googling 'An apology to Klaas Woldring' on pages from Australia, as advised in my post to the DPMC Forums linked to in my first post to this OLO thread, gives this page as its first listing: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3212&page=0

The viewer needs to read that entire thread to get an overview of what I am on about, but the key explanation is contained in the post shown in this Twitpic: http://twitpic.com/20tpbg .

The first link http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionFirstPrefs-13745-115.htm pictured therein with a text description of its then (18 November 2009) content yields this today: http://twitpic.com/20tsf6 . Tracks being covered post November 2009 by an Australian government instrumentality by any chance, I wonder? Can it be determined by some internet-savvy member of the public when that '404' first went up?

And yes, what purports to have been the finalised display of the VTR for the 2007 Federal elections can be seen here: http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/federal_elections/2007/vtr_guide.htm , but read what I had to say about this reworked electronic document in the last post to the 'Apology to Klaas Woldring' thread. The original VTR has been doubtless 'cleaned up'.

Yes, FG, in the electronic age one would expect to see new enrolments reflected almost immediately, however having experienced PS life what is often expected or assumed is not always so.

One can only admire your solid and thorough research on this FG. I wonder if the tendency to withold such information is to cover up human error or something else - often in the PS the tendency is more to stuff up rather than a greater conspiracy. Whatever the reason, it does not justify denying access.

(Just as an aside: was interesting to note at the time of the 2007 federal election an estimated 92.3% of eligible people were enrolled (from the AEC website)