Public Address | Cafe | OnPoint: Government Portfolios for Dummies

Clive Gifford

Sat, 24 Aug 2013 11:44:33 +1200

There are a number of newer briefings for incoming ministers scattered around in other locations. For example:

http://www.mbie.govt.nz/about-us/publications/BIMs/2013-BIMs

A search like this turns up plenty of others:

https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=site:+govt.nz+briefing+for+incoming

LeslieGoodliffe

Fri, 12 Jul 2013 00:18:01 +1200

How did you successfully copy and paste the results of search? I've tried and failed twice. Honestly, NDHA has about 25 2008 briefing documents stored and catalogued in New Zealand Libraries Catalogue. I don't know where the 2011 documents are. Govt departments increasing efficiency under National appears to involve relentless…

LeslieGoodliffe

Fri, 05 Jul 2013 20:51:55 +1200

I've never tried to copy and paste the URL for a search result. A keyword search with fewer terms – I should have truncated minister – is closer to my original result:
http://nzlc.natlib.govt.nz/vwebv/searchResults?searchId=274&recPointer=0&searchType=1&sortBy=PUB_DATE_DESC.
Still not much for 2011, though.

B Jones

Fri, 05 Jul 2013 08:35:23 +1200

Can't speak for the public service in general but my old dept was heavily weighted towards law, public policy, politics, philosophy, history etc among policy advisers – backgrounds that ensure you can write or think well, but don't require you to be able to work with statistics or Excel. A…

Keir Leslie

Thu, 04 Jul 2013 21:19:27 +1200

Are senior advisers mostly from a humanities back ground? I don't actually think that's true, I suspect they trend social science / administration / harder sciences in general.

Keith Ng

Thu, 04 Jul 2013 18:43:45 +1200

People making the important decisions in policy ministries don't realise its importance because they're steeped in humanities rather than information science culture, and are mostly older and less likely to have picked up information science through having fun with computers.

That's why I reckon the best way forward might be…

Keith Ng

Thu, 04 Jul 2013 18:40:15 +1200

Is this service likely to be any more reliable than the individual Government departments?

It looks more haphazard that my own efforts...

http://nzlc.natlib.govt.nz/vwebv/search?searchArg=briefing+for+incoming+ministers&searchCode=GKEY%5E*&limitTo=&recCount=25&searchType=1&page.search.search.button=Search

B Jones

Thu, 04 Jul 2013 09:51:29 +1200

To be fair, Ministers don't have buckets of time, and finding ways to get their attention and have an impact is always going to be a challenge. Think of the impact infographics have on public debate, vs wordy journal articles.

But there are a number of potential roadblocks to sharing…

Matthew Poole

Thu, 04 Jul 2013 09:23:21 +1200

what government departments know is very different to what they can convey to government Ministers

Particularly when said ministers are of the reputed ilk of Pull-ya Benefit, who apparently demanded that briefing documents be no more than two sides of A4.

Stephen Judd

Thu, 04 Jul 2013 08:47:56 +1200

Nice work Keith.

Ross Mason

Thu, 04 Jul 2013 08:05:16 +1200

It could have been worse. Twink the screen and take a picture.

Ian Dalziel

Thu, 04 Jul 2013 07:00:56 +1200

I honestly feel that the government shouldn't be passing laws affecting IT if they don't know any 'I' about the 'T'.
They are using old school troubleshooting to fix that pesky democracy processor in Chchch ...
– Turning it off, and then (hopefully) turning it on again...

secrets with twink…

LeslieGoodliffe

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 22:09:58 +1200

Is this service likely to be any more reliable than the individual Government departments? A number of the 2008 briefing documents are in the National Digital Heritage Archive, accessible through the New Zealand Libraries' Catalogue – although the bibliographic records note that the links won't work. There is only one…

FletcherB

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 20:46:26 +1200

If people are sending out secrets with twink then they deserve to be revealed.

The secrets, or the people? :D

B Jones

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 19:11:10 +1200

Government departments, or at least the parts of them whose business it is to know, generally do; it's just that they're made up of lots and lots of people who don't all share a skill set and don't always talk to each other, and the people who don't know are…

Konrad Kurta

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 15:28:40 +1200

If some MPs compare the internet to Skynet and think file sharing is illegal, it doesn't surprise me that some government departments don't know the difference between a scanned image PDF and a text 'read only' PDF file. I honestly feel that the government shouldn't be passing laws affecting IT…

Hilary Stace

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 14:25:33 +1200

http://www.odi.govt.nz/resources/publications/minister-briefing/

BIMs for Minister for Disability Issues since portfolio created. Readily available on the odi website. What's more they are probably read by a lot of people in the sector. Latest one pdf and word.

The Ruminator

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 13:14:43 +1200

Back in my day, we used to print the response, then go over the redacted bits in black vivid, then photocopy that with the toner colour all the way to DARK then scan that.

Used to work pretty well.

If people are sending out secrets with twink then they deserve…

Matthew Poole

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 12:59:44 +1200

I don’t really blame the staff for choosing to do that.

No, but I do blame the executives (and the penny-pinching ministers) for not investing in a proper electronic document release management system that handles redaction appropriately. Such things exist, and are of sufficient reliability that they're used for releasing…

B Jones

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 12:54:29 +1200

It's a Two Cultures problem to some extent, and a generational problem as well. People making the important decisions in policy ministries don't realise its importance because they're steeped in humanities rather than information science culture, and are mostly older and less likely to have picked up information science through…

Lilith __

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 12:32:50 +1200

I think there's clearly a lack of basic IT literacy among civil servants. Can't this be addressed? This shit's important.

andin

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 11:21:42 +1200

Keeping better government data better than the government
This system is broken and only suits those who want to dominate everything under the guise of being even handed. Its hierarchical and a failure.
looking at Horizontalism at the mo' There has to be a better future

B Jones

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 10:28:14 +1200

I’m lead to believe that there aren’t any standard procedures for redacting those documents

I've seen everything from photocopying documents festooned with "OIA tape" to blank out sensitive bits, to changing the font to white while printing, to actually sending out a document with twink over the redacted bits, which…

Glenn Pearce

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 10:22:12 +1200

It's seems to be a fairly standard tactic for the Police to provide Defense lawyers with documents in the most unusable format possible as part of Discovery in Court proceedings.

I'm sure this adds to the Legal Aid costs as the Defense has to wade through the documents, only the…

Stephen R

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 10:13:30 +1200

Making sure you don't fuck up redaction and erasure of sensitive information is quite a big deal for people in the public service. Accidentally releasing sensitive or private information is something they rightly get hammered for.

I'm lead to believe that there aren't any standard procedures for redacting those documents,…

Matthew Poole

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 09:41:03 +1200

Keeping better government data better than the government.
Because why not.

Because security through obscurity. It's much easier not to fuck up redaction and erasure of document data fields if you scan than if you do a "Save as PDF" from Office.

Also, old documents don't give shit away to…

B Jones

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 09:26:19 +1200

For reasons I have yet to work out, the people responsible for creating documents aren't the people who understand why there's a difference between scanning and converting electronically to pdf. In my experience if you asked a policy analyst to prepare a document for publication on the web, the first…

The Ruminator

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 09:17:25 +1200

knobjobbers

I enjoy this immensely. Except I once was one of these knobjobbers at a certain Government Dept. We actually moved to OCR PDFs for official correspondence. It was a big day. Lots of high fiving by us young tech savvy folk.

Ross Mason

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 08:34:14 +1200

PDFs are scanned and not searchable, etc.

YES!

I have complained all the way to the Government IT Guru about this. They will not standardise an OCR package "because they would be stepping on commercial toes".

Thus the reason Keith has undertaken this wee project no doubt!

Knobjobbers.

Public Address

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 08:34:14 +1200

Discussion from blog post.