The Open Government Partnership was launched in 2011 to provide an international platform for domestic reformers committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. The primary mechanism of the OGP for supporting domestic reformers to secure open government reforms is the development and implementation of National Action Plans by member countries. The Civil Society Organisation Review outlined here was designed to support the rigorous and comprehensive scrutiny of an action plan by civil society. More about the CSO Review at ogpreview.org
Involve.org.uk will publish full results in due course, where scoring each question is weighted to ensure that each is given the worth it deserves. Today I’ll just run through an overview of the process, & share some first impressions.
That Civil Society Review is now underway. Its is a parallel, independent assessment of the ambition and openness of the NAP. It is not part of the official Independent Reporting Mechanism. The review may be taken into consideration by the IRM researcher. A number of other countries have chosen to participate in this parallel process, to facilitate learning and improvements during and OGP cycle. For Australia, this review’s timing happened to be just we launch into implementation of the NAP, a perfect time to build in commitment details that will keep the NAP on course to deliver tangible measurable benefits to citizens.
The review has three steps, the first of which has just been completed:
Step 1. A lead civil society organisation (lead CSO) conducts a preliminary review. In Australia’s case that’s the Open Government Partnership Civil Society Network. We asked those who’ve participated to share their experiences via a survey. We report on first impressions from 7 civil society respondents below.
This preliminary review has three sets of questions (about 70 questions all up)
Assessing the process of developing the National Action Plan
Review the quality and ambition of the Action Plan (reviewing 5 randomly selected commitments)
Evaluating the National Action Plan as a Whole
Respondents answered multiple choice responses, and made comments on in each section. Contributions came from 7 Civil Society members, including 4 CSO IWG members.
Right then, here are those initial impressions.
Assessing the process of developing the National Action Plan
PM&C were commended for responding positively in August to CSO representation that a formal dialogue mechanism was necessary to progress the plan. The PM&C team showed a willingness to take on board feedback on improving OGP consultations. However, no explanation or reasons were given for rejection of public input.
Review the quality and ambition of the Action Plan
Five commitments selected at random. These were 1.3, 1.4, 3.1, 4.1 & 5.2, covering themes of extractives transparency, corporate corruption, high value datasets, election & political integrity, & participation in government decisions. Assessors reviewed commitments for quality and ambition. On average, scores sat between ‘somewhat’ and ‘moderately’ successful in each of the criteria assessed for development and ambition. Commitments on the whole were found not to be sufficiently challenging, and comments on commitment details suggest that the plan shows some repeat of existing work, commitments were vague, lack stretch goals and committed only to broad outcomes.
Evaluating the National Action Plan as a Whole
PM&C team were commended for taking on board feedback in the consultation process and their hard work on improving OGP consultations within constraints. Most commitments were welcomed, and are described as showing potential for ambition. Concern was expressed where key elements of OGP spirit are missing. For example beneficial ownership register that isn’t public. It was not clear whether reforms sufficiently align with the bigger Government policy agenda, for departments to drive change. Lack of public high level ministerial support for Open Government agenda was also noted. Establishing an MSF with good Terms of Reference for genuine collaboration was described as important.
Step 2. The preliminary review will be shared with other CSOs and the government point of contact for comments.
Step 3. Based on the comments received, the review will revised by the lead CSO. The lead CSO has discretion to respond to comments as they see fit. The completed review is then published, along with the comments.
Prepared by: Kat Szuminska on behalf of the Australian Open Government Civil Society Network
The OpenAustralia Foundation team and contributors redesigning street development notices at the Frontyard Hackfest 2016. Photo by Lisa Cross
Are you passionate about open source technology and improving our society? Come work on the OpenAustralia Foundation’s open source projects and learn how to fix bugs in Australia’s democracy with a paid, full-time, and remote Outreachy Internship from May to August this year.
Outreachy Internships are a way for newcomers from underrepresented backgrounds to get experience contributing to free and open source software projects by doing paid, full-time work:
Currently, internships are open internationally to women (cis and trans), trans men, and genderqueer people. Additionally, they are open to residents and nationals of the United States of any gender who are Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander. We are planning to expand the program to more participants from underrepresented backgrounds in the future.
We’re looking for someone who:
has experience building human-friendly software;
has experience doing Ruby on Rails development; and,
wants to make our democracy more open and inclusive.
April 13: Deadline for applications (extended from March 30 as we’ve join the program late)
May 4: Outreachy announce the accepted participants
May 30 – August 30: Internship period
Outreachy Mentor
We’re a tiny team (4 staff and a dozen or so contributors), and we work very collaboratively. You’ll be in contact with most of us (including the Henare Degan and Kat Szuminska) in our Slack channel during the internship, but your main contact and mentor will be Luke Bacon (me). Here’s my contact details:
Pick a small, introductory contribution to make and make a Pull Request to our project with your contribution. At this stage you might want to email us or join our slack channel to ask questions. We have a GitHub Issues label “good for first contribution”. Use that list to find something that interests you and would involve related skills to the project you’ve selected.
Tell us about the projects you’ve worked on and your programming experience.
Tell us why you choose us and the specific project you want to work on. What do you want to learn and achieve through this program?
Link to your merged Pull Request (which is a requirement to be considered for the internship). Be available and responsive through the application period so we can help you improve your application.
We’re here to help if you have any questions. Email us on contact@oaf.org.au .
Why Outreachy?
Many groups of people are excluded from participating in Australia’s democracy along lines like their gender, ethnicity, age, wealth and sexuality. Our projects need to be useful to those people as they participate and lead or we’re just reinforcing the existing concentration of power. We need a team with a broad range of backgrounds and perspectives to build tools that can do this. Outreachy is the perfect fit for us to find someone who wants to join our team, get to know them, and train them up in our approach.
We’re also very passionate about open source as an approach and we rely on free and open source software (FOSS) to do our work. All our projects are FOSS and we try to be an example of how an organisation can be open about it activities and decision making. Outreachy is run by people working on great FOSS projects and we actually use a number of participating organisations’ work. It’s a pleasure for us to get to help someone start contributing FOSS and be part of Outreachy.
Working with us
The OpenAustralia Foundation aims to transform our democracy by giving all Australians the tools they need to effect the change they want. We create simple technologies that encourage and enable people to participate directly in the political process on a local, community and national level.
In working on our projects you’ll be constantly chiseling away the complexity of government bureaucracy and allowing citizens focus on the things that matter to them. This isn’t easy. We need to constantly advocate for citizens and their right to know and participate.
The Outreachy Internship is a remote program–all the communication and collaboration happening online. This is how most open source contribution works, and we’re a completely remote team ourselves. Most of us live and work from different parts of the east coast of Australia. You’ll get a travel fund to meet the team as part of the program. We’re generally working and responsive between 10am and 6pm Monday to Friday AEDT/AEST.
All our project communication happens in GitHub Issues and Pull Requests and in our Slack channel where our team and volunteers chat while they work. We generally try and keep everything in Github, but if you’d like to join us in Slack to ask questions and get to know our Outreachy mentors don’t hesitate to email us for an invite contact@oaf.org.au. We have a #hackerspace room for letting people know what we’re hacking on and asking questions. There’s also #townsquare for general discussions and introductions.
In December 2016, Prime Minister and Cabinet’s office announced Australia’s first National Action Plan (the Plan, or NAP) complete with 15 reform commitments.
To help make sure we give Australia’s Open Government reform commitments the best chance of success, that they retain their ambition, are relevant and are successfully rolled out, it’s vital that civil society stay closely involved. I’ll continue to work with the Interim Working Group and Australian Open Government Partnership Civil Society Network Steering Committee (at least until the transition & election respectively, and if selected/elected, beyond that), to help both groups evolve.
Working with the Interim Working Group
The current Interim Working Group was appointed by the Federal Government last year. This group now has to perform a couple of big infrastructure ‘build the plane as we’re flying it’ maneuvers, in true OGP spirit the IWG has to Establish a way for Government, civil society and non-government stakeholders to meet regularly and work together effectively. This is the focus of reform commitment 5.1, designing a multistakeholder forum that has the agency and capacity to oversee the National Action Plan. The due date on creating that forum is the end of March, less than a week away. Our current working group doesn’t meet again until the end of March. The OGP Multistakeholder Forum handbook outlines an example (and quite ambitious) timeline, setting out activities for developing a forum is 8 weeks. So even if we kicked off at that next meeting and used this template, we’d still looking at June completion at the earliest.
Working on Specific Commitments as a leader of a Civil Society Organisation
The Interim Working Group remains responsible for overseeing 15 Open Government reforms. There are also important roles for Civil Society Organisations and other non-government actors to play here. The IWG will help ensure that government agencies leading each of the commitments identify these groups. Charities, smaller Non Government Organisations, grassroots, and informal community groups, all have enormous experience and deep insights into problems that this National Action Plan seeks to solve. Successful partnership between civil society and government is essential to the OGP’s platform for action.
To begin with
Work with Department of Industry and Innovation on Commitment 5.2 Beginning the next steps with a meeting between Department of Industry and Innovation representatives, Peter Timmins and me last week.
Help make sure that the reforms which the Government committed to in the Action Plan progress in a spirit of openness, transparency, accountability, and participation. For example we might spend time translating some of the documentation, as we did with the Manifesto. Or, people might find it interesting to see who voted for parliamentary reforms in light of the government’s commitment 4.1 Confidence in the electoral system and political parties. We may want to look for evidence in how we see FOI requests made, and make recommendations on the reform commitment 3.1: Information management and access laws for the 21st century
There are a bunch of commitments that are closely connected with the work that the OpenAustralia Foundation do, in opening up government. We’ve previously written about, gathered data, and provided evidence on issues that are part of this reform agenda. Also, as part of this Open Government National Action Plan, we’ve drafted, contributed to, commented on, solicited and provided feedback for commitments that form our National Action Plan. We’re also a tiny team. We have to focus our work on where we can be most helpful and effective. As luck would have it, the timing of our next planning meeting couldn’t be better, it’s on Monday. We’ll review this work then.
We’ll look at our objectives, how we can best connect with Australia’s involvement in the OGP along side all our other work. I expect to report back here next week both from OAFs’s planning meeting on Monday, and that I’ll have good progress to report from the Interim Working Group’s next meeting on Tuesday.
If you’re in Sydney on Tuesday, consider coming along to our next pub meetup.
As a Member of the Civil Society Network
The steering committee for the Australian Open Government Partnership Civil Society Network (aka. AOGPN or the Network) was brought together quickly. This pragmatic and cooperative group adapted the UK network’s open model & resources to establish the Network quickly.
Now the first National Action Plan is underway, there’s little time to regroup, to reflect and to evolve. Initially formed in November 2015, the steering committee committed to hold elections within 18 months of forming the network.
Attract and elect a new steering committee.
The Network is now actively looking for strong Civil Society leaders to nominate for the Steering committee to come forward. Nominations due in by end of March.
I’ve put my hand up.
Clarify identity – what do we mean by Civil Society?
Figure out where the network stands on what constitutes a member of ‘civil society’ that the group agrees to work with.
How do business people fit into this model?
Clearly communicate with members and public
the definition of civil society the group is working with
Terms of membership
Increase diversity of members to better reflect the diversity of our communities in Australia.
Consider whether and how and when to become a formal entity
Grow membership sustainably (compare with UK civil society network rate of growth)
As a representative of this lead Civil Society organisation, I’ve been asked to assess OGP NAP work to date this week. I’ll pull the final report together with colleagues from the Network steering committee tomorrow, and then present this initial review through involve.org.uk’s Civil Society review tool.
One of the strengths of the Open Government Partnership is the Independent Reporting Mechanism, and while the Civil Society review isn’t part of that formal review, its great to have an opportunity to provide early feedback, and opportunities to apply some corrections as we get into the implementation phase. Down the track, this parallel report might also be taken into consideration by Australia’s independent OGP reviewer.
“Independent monitoringProvides input on the government self-assessment report and the Independent Reporting Mechanism research process; work with civil society partners to comment on these reports and/or prepare a parallel, independent assessment of the OGP”.
Here’s looking ahead then to an elected (and refreshed) steering committee for the Network.
By mid-Winter Australia the IWG might even hope to establish the first iteration of a Open Government multistakeholder forum, driving this Open Government agenda, collaboratively, full speed ahead.
Last week we made a couple of changes that make your PlanningAlerts emails more responsive and a bit more secure. They’re great examples of the kind of improvements we’d usually struggle to find to the time for, were it not for our maintenance-focussed start to the year.
We ask you to confirm your email in PlanningAlerts
When you sign up for an alert or create a comment on PlanningAlerts we send you a confirmation email to make sure it’s really you signing up or commenting. No one likes waiting around for a confirmation email so it’s important we send these really quickly.
While we were helping someone with an unrelated PlanningAlerts question we noticed that email confirmations were taking up to 2 minutes to be sent. That’s not very snappy!
The problem was that we’ve now got so many people signed up to email alerts that these confirmation emails could sometimes get stuck waiting behind those regular alert emails. We’ve now created a dedicated queue for confirmation emails so they arrive quick-smart.
This is what PlanningAlerts emails in Gmail used to look like
Last year Gmail introduced a scary looking red broken padlock symbol to indicate if a message you’ve received was encrypted in transit or not. We’ve now switched on opportunistic encryption with our email service, Cuttlefish, so that all messages from our services like PlanningAlerts are protected in transit.
This means that if anyone is snooping on the traffic between us and your email provider they won’t be able to read the content of the messages we’re sending you. Plus there’s no more scary broken padlock symbol in Gmail.
Back in 2013 I tagged along invited myself to the Open Government Summit. At the time, I expected that Australia would officially announce we were joining the Open Government Partnership. At this summit in London, thousands of people from Civil Society and Government were working together on making life better for people in their countries.
The opening plenary session set the scene, the UK’s Special Minister for State, Francis Maude, addressed a packed hall of people from Government and Civil Society together, leading on “ Transparency is an Idea whose Time has Come”.
I hadn’t ever heard such a solidity to those words before. I saw and heard arguments made so very clearly of the benefits to people, to societies and even to economies. He presented Open Government Partnership as a truly an international platform that could elevate expectations from Government and of Civil Society.
Australian didn’t show up for Open Government that day. In the midst of positive energy and a throng of high level political support on show, I can’t say I wasn’t a little disappointed.
The British Prime Minister and outgoing Government OGP co-chair David Cameron went on to share “you can now map the crime of streets, the standards in your schools, the performance of your hospitals,you can see the businesses and people who Government meets with names and roles of senior civil servants, not to mention the pay of most of our top officials” before going on to announce yet more reforms, a couple of which we’re yet to dig into, including “a register of beneficial ownership that is open to the public” The Prime Minister clearly articulated the case for that register to be public. “Together we can close the door on shadowy corrupt practises.” he concluded.
And that was just the opening of the summit.
Three years and a change of Australian Prime Minister or three later, Malcolm Turnbull gave the fires of Open Government Partnership another little prod. It would take a bit more stoking than he seemed prepared to give it.
Without any big announcements or visible high level support, it was hard to imagine how a series of potentially transformative reform commitments would be crafted or co-created.
Why The OpenAustralia Foundation Dived In
We see OpenAustralia Foundation values aligned with the Open Government movement, and thought about how we could help in practical ways.
Working with Government to extend the public servants’ comfort zones in the open Government space and encourage greater ambition. This includes:
Helping people understand that the OGP is about practical improvements in people’s lives not just Open Government philosophy & largely about Open Data.
Advocate that Government include commitments beyond the two themes they initially offered back in November 2017 and further out than Open Data alone. Those themes were:
Improving public services
More effective Use of Public Resources
In particular we saw a disconnect between perceptions of public integrity and the opportunities to improve accountability and transparency for public officials.
We came up with a goal that would express what we wanted to do & how we might go about it.
Help create The Best Possible National Action Plan (NAP or The Plan) We’d aim to do this within the boundaries of that comfort zone, and maintain the integrity and spirit of the commitments as far as possible. Included in this is we aimed to promote clear communication of the plan, the commitments and opportunities for people.
Look for ways to increase diversity of voices contributing to discussion, to increase interest and awareness in the Australian Open Government Partnership Network so that this group would get stronger, reflect a broader number of communities of interest, and for The Best Possible National Action Plan
The OpenAustralia Foundation worked as part of the independently formed Civil Society focussed Australian Open Government Partnership Network (AOGPN or ‘the Network’) interim self appointed Steering Committee. I put in an expression of interest and was both honored and flabbergasted to be invited to be one of six Civil Society members of the Interim Working Group (IWG or the Working Group). We’d participate alongside six senior public servants in meetings to discuss what would become Australia’s first Open Government National Action Plan. Between us, we reached out to Civil Society Organisations, individuals, business people, consultants and other non-government actors, the Government and the public to get input into and improve Australia’s first action plan.
Through the Working Group, Civil Society had a more formal opportunity to connect with each other as well as with Government, to work on these opportunities.
Now we can say that the Government presented a more ambitious plan following working with them, with greater scope and ambition than the Government initially proposed. However, commitments did not go as far as the reforms people who participated called for (see both the Manifesto and Wiki where the initial team at PM&C collected ideas).
Some things we did that were effective towards these goals
We created a solid home for the Australian Open Government Partnership Civil Society Network online, a starting point for people to find out about the Open Government Partnership at opengovernment.org.au including brand ID, content design, strategy & delivery.
Represented broad Civil Society interests, in the Working Group and Network Steering Committee
Popularising use the words/concepts of Civil Society and participation which led into them being more acceptable in discussions and then into the action plan. Members of Network and others who initially shied away from the terms, then stood up for its use down the track, and these little words became part of IWG meeting vocabulary.
Contributed substantially to two commitments on Participation
Participation in Government decision making (we led this one)
Including Ongoing Dialogue mechanism as a commitment
Via membership of Interim Working Group and public submission
provided input to specific commitments, including:
OGP process on extending “trust” commitment including submission to OGP on privacy was effective. The commitment about trust now acknowledges that it’s not just about people misunderstanding, but that there are real privacy problems that need to be solved. Via submission/blog post and advocacy in IWG meetings.
In all commitments:
Advocated for Civil Society to be included and leading actors named as a starting point, to ensure this didn’t drop off as we got into the process of implementation (still working on it)
Via membership of Interim Working Group, Questioning, “early and often”, assumptions made about how the process would run, what would be included. At the same time, working constructively and ‘picking battles’ to shift away from an inexorable slide to ‘business as usual’ with ‘the usual suspects’. This was a learning curve. It’s important this continue.
Making reforms easy to understand, and tell people about them
We produced the Manifesto, an easy to read document, drew attention to reasons for each proposed reform, gave an outline in plain language, and explained the local context.
This resource was reused and referred to by the Government, and their consultant for engagement, both Government and Civil Society members told us that they found this immensely useful. I don’t think the volume of people looking at this document online reflects the influence and interest reported to us. We can look at how many of the proposal from the Manifesto into The Plan, but not establish causal correlation.
Helped other Civil society members of OGP understand the need to talk about this work from community’s perspective.
Led language used, so it’s easier for people to understand
Encouraged and supported Network/Steering committee/Working group members to write and share through the Network blog on important and potentially transformative commitments.
Ran Social media awareness/engagement campaign to make the most of short window of opportunity presented at short notice, for 2 week public input to the plan.
Social Media: Twitter Report
At the start of October 2016 the @opengovau had around 130 followers. By mid December 2016 @opengovau had over 400 followers.
When compared to other main social media influencers on the issue of the Open Government Partnership, @opengovau was ranked in the top ten influencers, ranking two spots below @opengov, a Twitter account run by the U.S. State Department. This was despite @opengovau having less than 1/8th the social media followers than any other account in the top ten group of social media influencers on the Open Government Partnership in October 2016.
Between October and November 2016, the @opengovau received 246.9k impressions over a 28 day period. The number of people visiting the @opengovau profile rose by 963.2%.
We learned something about Relationship Building for Practical Outcomes
When we had the first Network meeting, at least one person involved said they couldn’t see the point of the OGP, and many other people just ignored it. A year later, they were among a still small but more diverse group of voices and interests, expressing frustration and interest passionately with “why am I only finding out now?” or “why didn’t I know about this?” via twitter. Some of those we reached later in the piece contributed to formal process and others didn’t. It’s important to pick up with those who expressed an interest and understand how they might get stay actively interested and get involved in future.
On twitter, website, discussions, public information sessions acted as trusted Civil Society conversation facilitator, and occasional interpreter and peace-keeper.
Turning up and engaging was huge factor – if we don’t do it, then who is going to? How would this have looked if we hadn’t?
Staying publicly calm and working with and through tensions in Civil Society, staying the course with Government, Civil Society and public. By working positively with the passions of complainants, a couple of complainants were moved to become contributors to the action plan. Win!
We learned that some things we did that weren’t so effective, and identified areas to work on if and when we continue this work. Fortunately this is an iterative process, and includes lots of scope for reflection, learning and iteration.
I (Kat) didn’t write down what the aim of the project was and blog this at the very beginning.
Some outside the Network were not aware of the rules of joining the Network and so thought there weren’t any. Great feedback for an organisation promoting accountability.
Group discussion platform wasn’t widely used. We set up discussion groups around themes that were then not used very much. Nominated discussion leaders didn’t lead or discuss the issues widely, or invite others to participate publicly to any great extent- what would it take for that to change?
About a month ago we had our major planning session for 2017. The idea is to get everyone together for a few days, share and discuss project ideas, and ultimately come up with a plan for what OpenAustralia Foundation should work on over the whole year.
We’ve done quite a few of these sessions now and each one ends up being different. We spent the first day of our most recent session reviewing 2016 and writing down all the things we want to work on – from bugs we want to fix, right through to major new projects we want to work on.
Usually this ends up as a grab bag of amazing new civic projects we’ve been dying to create for Australia. Instead we noticed a distinct theme. Many of the things we most wanted to work on were essentially maintenance tasks – fixing long-standing bugs, paying off technical debt, or improving our infrastructure.
After a bit of thought we realised that this focus is a product of the environment we’ve been in for the last several months. Because Luke and I have been fire-fighting some challenging stability problems with our projects we weren’t in the frame of mind to come up with more projects to create – and maintain!
This made us remember another important thing too. In the more than 8 years that OpenAustralia Foundation has been creating civic projects we’ve seen a lot of other projects come and, sadly, go. A defining characteristic of our projects is that we maintain them. It’s one thing to create a shiny new project but it takes a different level of dedication to maintain things year in, year out. It might sound obvious but a project needs to be maintained for us all to benefit from the civic good and the change it promises to create.
So we’ve decided to dedicate this quarter to some much deserved maintenance work. At our next quarterly planning session in late March we’ll revisit things and see if we’re ready to explore major new projects and features. To help feed that inspiration we’re going to experiment with talking to different groups of people creating change in Australia that might benefit from some civic tech goodness.
The nuts and bolts
To do this work we decided to create a backlog in a Trello board and just start working through it, instead of estimating and scheduling projects like we have done to date. Here’s a selection of things we’ve already done:
We’ve had a busy month since the last Pub Meet. We’ve been working on the tasks we set out in late January for our maintenance focused quarter. We’re aiming to fix a bunch of niggling problems that distract us from developing new features for the people using our services.
There’s been no bigger niggle than the issues morph.io has been suffering for months now. A few weeks ago, making a huge volunteer contribution to our work, morph.io user, familiar face at the Pub Meet, and lovely person Lindsay Holmwood, jumped into the fray and fixed one of the most serious issues for morph.io. Thank you so much Lindsay!
Speaking of Lindsay, you’ll see him at the Pub Meet on the 28th, sharing techniques for writing scrapers in a way that minimises the impact on the site you’re scraping. Web scraping is a huge part of civic tech, and Lindsay is a serious expert in this area—don’t miss it!
If you’ve got a civic tech project, seen something interesting, or have questions about civic tech and democracy in 2017, we’d love you to share them as a 5 minute lightning talk at the Pub Meet. Just leave a comment on the meetup page like Lindsay did.
One of the slides from the talk: Looking in as people consider possible futures and how to reach them at Frontyard Projects in Marrickville, Sydney. Photo by Frontyard, CC BY SA
Last month Henare and I were in Hobart for linux.conf.au. We met lots of really nice people working on a dizzying array of interesting projects.
Linux.conf.au is Australia’s biggest conference for people building and using Free and Open Source Software. People come from all over the world to be there. Henare and Matthew from the OpenAustralia Foundation actually met at the conference last time it was in Hobart 2009, which kicked off Henare’s open source civic hacking.
I spoke on the last day of the conference. It was nerve-racking spot to be honest, but it also meant I got to learn from all the other speakers and draw some of their ideas together.
My talk Hacking democracy and playing the long game was about how I currently understand the ways OpenAustralia Foundation projects actually impact society. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about where our work to transform democracy stands in 2017. It seems like we’re in an important moment to really think about the impact of civic tech, and above all, continue working hard.
Giving this talk was a great opportunity to think this all through and share these ideas. Thanks so much to the linux.conf.au team for inviting me, supporting me to get there, and putting on such a great event—I really appreciate it.
Producing this talk became a way to think through all those ideas–so it does cover quite a lot of ground. It starts out talking about the elements of democracy that we’re interested in, different ways to think about it’s futures, and one framework for understanding how change happens drawn from Lawrence Lessig’s 1999 book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.
The second half gets into Right To Know as a case study. I go through how the project is making it easier for people to get information they need from our governments. In the end I go through the practical things you can start doing to support and contribute to this work.
I hope it’s interesting and useful. I’d love to know what you think.
If this sounds interesting and you’re new to the OpenAustralia Foundation, here’s some links for finding out more:
Since August 2016, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has been refusing to process the valid Freedom of Information requests they receive from people using Right To Know.
One of them is Right to Know volunteer administrator Ben Fairless, who lodged his complaint in a personal capacity after the ATO blocked his information request.
On November 21 2016, the Freedom of Information Director of the OAIC’s Dispute Resolution Branch contacted us with a request for information to help their investigation into the ATO’s blocking of requests raised in the complaints. We have decided to publish those questions and our answers below.
Note that the OAIC’s questions are unlikely to have been raised by the people who made the complaints about the ATO’s actions to block their requests. Rather, they appear to be based on statements provided by the ATO that match their response to the ABC last August, that we take “no responsibility for supervising posts or removing unacceptable material”. This is false.
We’ve also provided a timeline below covering all communications that we have had with the ATO in 2016. We think it’s important to point out that we responded to over 70% of requests from the ATO within 24 hours. Of those, we responded to all but one in less than 1 hour. We are an independent charity and Right To Know is a largely volunteer administered project, and this record is a testament to the dedication of our community to a well run, transparent and accountable Freedom of Information system in Australia. You can compare it to the response times of all our government agencies at righttoknow.org.au.
We work hard to ensure that Right To Know is a safe environment where people can work productively with government on furthering the government’s own goals of being open and transparent. We stand by our community and join their polite and respectful calls to the ATO to start processing the valid FOI requests made to them by people using Right To Know.
Questions from the OAIC to the Right To Know Team, 21 November 2016
On November 21 2016, the Freedom of Information Director of the OAIC’s Dispute Resolution Branch contacted us with the following questions to help their investigation into the ATO’s blocking of information requests made by people through Right To Know. Here are those questions with the answers we responded with on the December 4 2016.
Who is legally responsible for the maintenance of the RTK website?
As is clearly stated on the The Right to Know website, the footer includes the information that the website is s project of the OpenAustralia Foundation Limited (ABN 24 138 089 942) (“OAF”) a charity registered with the ACNC and was created using Alaveteli, an Open Source software product created by MySociety. It was created by staff and volunteers. Again this information is clearly stated at righttoknow.org.au
Who is legally responsible for the publication of content on the RTK website?
Righttoknow.org.au is more akin to an open email server, rather than a traditional content publisher. We make it very clear to requesters and authorities that their correspondence is automatically be published on the internet as part of this service. Users are able to send FOI requests using the site, and agencies are able to respond to requests. In addition, users and OAF staff and volunteers are able to annotate requests. OAF staff and volunteers are able to modify content (except for attachments). OAF does not own this content
We work hard to ensure that Right To Know is a safe environment where people can work productively with government on furthering the government’s own goals of being open and transparent. We stand by our community and join their polite and respectful calls to the ATO to start processing the valid FOI requests made to them by people using righttoknow.org.au.
How are the contents of FOI requests which are submitted to government agencies through the RTK website, including all correspondence related to the request both from and to the agency, monitored?
Users register on the site and confirm they have a valid email address for the site to send them emails.
Users can then submit a limited number of requests per day. The requests are sent directly to the agency without human intervention, just like sending an email from Webmail.
OAF staff and volunteers will sometimes check requests and remove requests based on our published guidelines. For example, we don’t allow requests containing personal information or requests which are clearly not requests for information.
We rely heavily on our volunteers and others within the RTK community (including government agencies) to report requests that they feel need a second look. We take action on those requests in line with our policies, and in most cases respond the same day
How does the RTK team respond to requests from agencies or individuals for specific FOI requests or other correspondence to be taken down from the RTK website? Please provide any information on the process, timing and criteria for acceding to such requests.
The ATO has sent us 5 takedown requests. We give every request serious consideration and have responded to each within a day. We agreed with 4 requests and promptly acted on them to remove the material. One of the most recent requests did not meet our takedown policy so we have not taken it down.
We’ve previously been asked to redact the names of ATO staff due to a processing error made by the ATO which put their staff at risk. We responded within an hour and agreed to take down the material, giving the ATO time to supply correctly redacted documents a few days later.
In once case we were not asked to redact names. Instead we were asked to remove a request by a member of the public for an internal review into the decision about their FOI request. The ATO claimed that they found it abusive towards their staff members. The ATO’s takedown request did not meet our takedown policy, so we left the request up on Right To Know.
The ATO has responded by refusing to accept lawful requests* made via Right to Know until we comply with their demands. These include “a manned contact number, address for service, and [undertaking] to remove any unacceptable material promptly”. The ATO has already stated that they’d “probably not be successful in obtaining a court injunction to remove the offending material on the grounds it was defamatory, or threatening in a criminal sense.” (See here for the documents where this is mentioned). This appears to be a clear attempt by the ATO to impose requirements over and beyond what are required by the Freedom of Information Act, which is disappointing considering the ATO was perfectly willing to respond to several requests before our request to remove an internal review.
We work hard to ensure that Right To Know is a safe environment where people can work productively with government on furthering the government’s own goals of being open and transparent. We stand by our community and join their polite and respectful calls to the ATO to start processing the valid FOI requests made to them by people using righttoknow.org.au.
Correspondence timeline
This is a list of all contact between the ATO and Right to Know:
10 March 2016 – ATO request removal of 6 requests containing personal information.
Requests were hidden on the same day as they contained personal information.
13 May 2016 – ATO request removal of documents that were inadvertently published which contained names of employees who deal with criminal investigations.
Documents were hidden within 1 hour of the request being sent to our designated contact email address
Documents were not re-sent by the ATO until 19 May 2016.
21 June 2016 – ATO request removal of a request containing personal and business information.
Request was hidden in less than 10 minutes.
30 June 2016 – ATO Assistant Commissioner (General Counsel) request removal of an Internal Review request made by a person using Right To Know.
1 July 2016 – Right to Know volunteer calls the ATO Assistant Commissioner at his request to discuss the matter.
Right to Know advise that it appears that the request doesn’t meet our published guidelines for removal.
ATO advises that they believe the Internal Review request implies that staff were “untruthful and behave appallingly”. The ATO Assistant Commissioner advises they will obtain an injunction against Right to Know should Right to Know refuse to remove the request.
29 August 2016 – Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) acknowledges a review request made by a volunteer of Right to Know
The review request was made in response to an application made using Right to Know.
The review request was made from the volunteer’s personal email account, and it was clearly stated that the volunteer made the application in a personal capacity and not on behalf of Right to Know.
15 September 2016 – ATO contact Right to Know in relation to FOI requests made in relation to decision to refuse to process requests
16 September 2016 – Right to Know advise that we have no objection to the release of the document
14 October 2016 – ATO request removal of request containing a Tax File Number
Request was hidden within 15 minutes of ATO email
20 October 2016 – ATO request removal of a request that contains a number of business names and ABN/ACN numbers
Right to Know seek clarification within 30 minutes as the information is available publicly (via the ASIC register).
No response is received by the ATO
2 November 2016 – OAIC contacts the Right to Know volunteer in relation to the review (now a complaint) acknowledged on 29 August 2016
This includes a request from the ATO to remove material previously considered on 30 June
The request is referred by the volunteer to the directors of the OpenAustralia Foundation who take no further action as they have not been contacted by the OAIC at this stage.
21 November 2016 – OAIC make a request for information to Right to Know (see questions and responses above)
The directors of the OpenAustralia Foundation respond to the request on 4 December 2016
To celebrate all our achievements in 2016, and all you great people who make them possible, we’re having a little party on Sunday the 11th of December in Sydney. We’d love to see you there!
While some of the biggest contributors to OpenAustralia Foundation projects are spread across Australia, unfortunately a national tour is not on the cards—this year :)
We’ll be at lovely Sydney Park Wetlands, behind the big hills of Sydney Park, from 11:00am to enjoy some sunshine. Bring along something to munch on and a drink or two. Here’s the details for your calendar:
OpenAustralia Foundation End of Year Picnic
Sydney Park Wetlands (south-east side), St Peters, Sydney
Sunday, 11th December 2016, 11am on.
Our sheltered picnic spot on the south-east corner of Sydney Park Wetlands
Sydney Park is just across the road from St Peters Train Station. There’s also a number of bus routes that pass the park, and heaps of free parking around Euston Rd.
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