Digital Library Services for Democracy

After our recent post we finally received a response from the Department of Parliamentary Services (DPS):

from: Web, Manager (DPS) <WebManager@aph.gov.au>
to: Matthew Landauer
date: Fri, May 1, 2009 at 5:46 PM
subject: RE: Hansard 23 September 2008 probably error in division

Dear Matthew

Thank you for your email to the APH web manager identifying a possible error in a division in Hansard for 23 September 2008.

Thank you for your patience while we investigated the error identified. Changes to Hansard, once they are past the ‘proof’ stage and are regarded as ‘official’, take some time to investigate and obtain approval to change.

For the future if you, or someone else from Open Australia, send us a correction, the Hansard area or web manager will undertake to respond within a fortnight, regardless of the outcome.

Hansard have investigated the matter you raised. The code for Mark Vaile was used in error, rather than that of Dana Vale (who was missing from the division). We’ve corrected and reloaded the Hansard to the web (both in ParlInfo Search and the daily PDFs on the APH website) to reflect this.

In your email you also mention that you identify spelling mistakes, formatting errors and logical inconsistencies in Hansard from time to time. We would appreciate it if you would continue to send these to the APH web manager email address. The web manager will then forward it to the relevant area. We will investigate, including retrieving and listening to the audio, if necessary, to check what the original speaker actually said. Where the error is within the Hansard (as in this case) we will fix it, though we may need to assess other changes against editorial guidelines. Where we are not able to access the audio to check, the normal procedure is to not change the Hansard, unless the error is clearly in the transcription. We do not have access to all previous audio, though we maintain it longer for chambers (years) than committees (months).

Thanks again for your help.

Kind regards,

Parliamentary Web Manager
Department of Parliamentary Services
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

This is how I responded:

from: Matthew Landauer
to: Web, Manager (DPS) <WebManager@aph.gov.au>
date: Mon, May 11, 2009 at 6:21 PM
subject: RE: Hansard 23 September 2008 probably error in division

Dear anonymous web person / web manager,

Thanks for your email and the effort you put into checking and
correcting the error with Mark Vaile’s code.

We also appreciate your assurance that someone will respond to any
future Hansard correction within two weeks. However, we are not a
watchdog. It is not our aim to count errors. Rather we need your site
to work and the data to be accurate and we need to be able to
communicate effectively with you.

We specifically asked for a technical contact at the department which
you have so far not provided nor even acknowledged. We’re waiting for
you to respond to that request.

Whether or not you are able to provide details of a technical contact,
we would still like a response from you. If you are not able to
provide that access to a technical contact, we’ll need information
from you on why it isn’t possible. This should include the name and
contact details of the person who is responsible for this particular
decision.

Another anonymous email will just not do for this purpose.

We look forward to your response.

All the best,
Matthew

Matthew Landauer
Founder OpenAustralia
http://www.openaustralia.org

P.S. All correspondence will be forwarded to our blog.

A fairly typical email exchange with the Department of Parliamentary Services (DPS), the administrators for the aph.gov.au website, goes something like this:

from: Matthew Landauer
to: webmanager@aph.gov.au
date: Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:39 AM
subject: Hansard 23 September 2008 probably error in division

According to the Hansard, Mark Vaile voted in a division on 23 September 2008. See
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2F2008-09-23%2F0060%22

However, according to his biography he resigned several months earlier on 30 July 2008. See
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22handbook%2Fallmps%2FSU5%22

There appears to be an inconsistency between these two facts. I would guess that the Hansard is probably mistaken. Is that correct? If so, it would be great if it could be fixed.

Many thanks!

All the best,
Matthew Landauer
Founder
http://www.openaustralia.org/

It’s looking good. I receive this very quick response.

from : Web, Manager (DPS)
to: Matthew Landauer
date: Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 12:47 PM
subject: RE: Hansard 23 September 2008 probably error in division

Thanks for your email Matthew

I will get this discrepancy checked and get back to you as soon as possible.

Kind regards
Margaret

Margaret Cazabon
Parliamentary Web Manager
Department of Parliamentary Services
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

I reply a few hours later thanking her.

More than a week passes with no further news. Hmmm… Naively I would expect that they would take this issue fairly seriously. It appears from the official Hansard record that someone has voted who wasn’t even a member of parliament at the time.

Anyway, I send the following email to follow up:

from: Matthew Landauer
to: webmanager@aph.gov.au
date: Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 1:13 PM

Any news on this?

Any possibility that OpenAustralia.org could be assigned a technical contact for the Hansard? Our software does lots of cross-checking of
the Hansard XML data and regularly finds spelling mistakes, formatting errors, logical inconsistencies and the like which I’m sure you would
like us to alert you to. However, this is currently very difficult as we have no technical contact.

It would also lighten your load as a go-between.

All the best,
Matthew

I’ve asked for an ongoing contact for OpenAustralia at the Department of Parliamentary Services before but those emails were never replied to. I wonder if I’ll hear any more this time.

Stony silence.

from: Matthew Landauer
to: webmanager@aph.gov.au
date: Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:37 PM

Hello, is anybody there??

So, it’s been two weeks and I’ve heard nothing more.

In the greater scheme of things it’s no big deal that a couple of emails from openaustralia.org are left unanswered. Hell, we’ve been known to not reply to all the emails we get.

The unfortunate things is this email exchange is fairly typical of all our dealings with the DPS over the last year. We’ll report a problem. If it’s something really glaring (like today’s Hansard is missing!) it will get fixed in half a day or so and I’ll receive a response to my email. If it’s something more subtle but just as important, I’ll sometimes get a response saying they’ll look into it but then I’ll never hear anything again.

Does it get relegated to the “too hard” basket?

There should be two-way communication between DPS and OpenAustralia. The DPS is providing a service to the general public by publishing the Hansard. We’re finding faults with this vital document of national importance and we don’t expect our reports of errors to be ignored.

We’re also providing a public service (entirely run by volunteers) and we have a responsibility to make it as good as it can be.

We’re providing all the results of our work (our software, our data) for free for anyone to use. We have software that we’ve written in the course of building OpenAustralia that finds many problems in the Hansard completely automatically. This software we’ve made freely available to everyone (including the DPS). However, they are apparently not interested in hearing from us.

DPS, where the bloody hell are you? We can help you. Ask us how.