Posts by nzlemming
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to James Butler,
When was the last time you thought consciously about that?
Every time I hear some clueless "reporter" say "thuh animal" - fair makes my blood boil.
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Only if your hovercraft is full of eels.
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From the Guardian
The report says: "Most officials agreed that the same issues would have been discussed and the same decisions reached had the FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] not been in place."
Well, that's actually a measure of success in your process of government, isn't it?
What that article says to me is just the opposite: that the civil servants don't like the fact that the FOIA is looking over their shoulder as they work and they'd like it to go away, please.
Making it more expensive would reduce its usage by Joe Public, not by journalists with a media organisation's credit card to back them up. And, when you consider the crap that Blair and co got away with, as well as Cameron's connections to Murdoch, I'm hardly surprised to see that Cabinet want to exclude themselves as they are the executive arm where the decisions are made (agencies only advise, remember) and that this type of legislation is designed to police.
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Speaker: Properly Public: It's our information, in reply to izogi,
At the very least, I’d be keen to see responses to most OIA requests published immediately for everyone to see, except when there’s good reason not to. I doubt journalists would enjoy a loss of exclusivity, though, and I don’t think many agencies would go for it without being pushed. But hey, that one’s just a small change by comparison.
In the UK it’s http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/
In NZ, a start has been made at http://fyi.org.nz/
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Speaker: Properly Public: It's our information, in reply to izogi,
iven that potentially millions of revisions of hundreds of thousands of drafts and millions of email threads and internal application source code and intranet pages and wikis meeting minutes and staff christmas party food preparation assignment lists and all sorts of junk are requestable under the OIA.
Fair point. But most of that stuff won't be requested. I guess I mean "stuff about the decisions made by the agency in the furtherance of the business of government"
And I don't have too much problem with requiring staff to be better educated about the nature, relevance and importance of the stuff they create. Which might lead to them being more likely to only create stuff that was relevant and important.
I once had a public argument with a Copyright Licensing Limited rep who was telling a seminar of librarians that it was up to them to monitor the usage of the photocopiers more diligently or the world would collapse. I pointed out to this person that way more than half the photocopiers in government agencies were not in the libraries anyway and that she really didn't understand the nature of what public servants copied. Most of what goes through the machines is multiple copies of our own documents for meetings, consultation, briefings etc. We didn't have time to copy books that she may or may not be paying authors for. [cue Islander for some choice comments about CLL :-) ]
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
hmm where does that leave the
intertwined Jerry Cornelius/Miss BrunnerI...don't think Moorcock is relevant if we're talking about bad writing...
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Speaker: Properly Public: It's our information, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
But if anything, it's the public servants who make the effort that are being let down by folks who treat the OIA as a joke.
Can't argue with that. My advice on the OIA has always been "Publish everything unless it shouldn't be published as it will save time in the long run"
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to BenWilson,
I’ve slowly given up on it – she was much more interesting in the first season as a person of logic with the strangely powerful and penetrating insights into human nature that sometimes come from the adult autistic.
Yup, me too. Plus the whole cannibal arc - blech (Not helped by the writer's strike in the middle of the season)
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Speaker: Properly Public: It's our information, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Meanwhile, I remain unconvinced that a high volume of OIA requests from media outlets or Opposition parties fail to meet the "due particularity" test of section 12(2) of the relevant act unless they're randomly generated word salad.
a) that make no sense - I suspect you might have missed a "not" in there, or something
b) that's because you haven't seen them. Some of the stuff we used to get from Rodney Hide, for example, was so wide-ranging that it was difficult to work out what he was getting at at all. Which was, IMHO, intentional on his part so as not to unduly alert his targets as to his upcoming attacks in the House (or in the media). And the same word-for-word requests would be sent to almost all departments, often about expenses of official activities. And Hide was not the only originator, although (again IMHO) the most egregious.I don't think izogi or I are trying to say "leave us alone, we're poor hardworking public servants, trust us we know what we're doing" or trying to avoid the fact that the OIA is part of public service law and that it must be complied with. Perhaps, instead, we're sharing public service lore about some of the shit that comes our way. Are public servants not allowed to whinge about their lot (as are, say, the partners of traindrivers) simply because we work in the public service? (And I use the "we" loosely - I have not been a formal public servant since 2005, though I have done contract work in the local and central government sector since then)
If I had a moment in time I was allowed to affect, it would be to distract Roger Hall the moment before he thought a play about misfits in the public service would be a good idea. Glide Time has shaped at least 2 generations' thinking about the public sector, and confirmed the existing biases of another couple. No-one seems to get that playwrights exaggerate things for effect.
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Speaker: Properly Public: It's our information, in reply to Keir Leslie,
The official information requested shall be specified with due particularity in the request.