[LINK] New IT system for the new Australian Government

[Tom Worthington]

At 10:13 AM 14/11/2007, Avi Miller wrote:
>On 14/11/2007, at 12:01 PM, Tom Worthington wrote:
>
>>... implement something like the GA system, across the entire 
>>Australian Government.
>
>I think you'll find this is already underway -- AGIMO ... index 
>several  agency websites and intranets. ...

The Search Services for Government project only envisaged an agency 
internet to be searched by staff of that 
agency: 
<http://www.agimo.gov.au/practice/delivery/awards/2007_finalist_case_studies/csiro>. 
So for example, if you are in the Treasury, you can search the 
Treasury intranet, but you can't search the Geoscience Australia intranet.

What I was proposing was that any public servant in any agency could 
search for relevant information in all agencies across the federal 
government. As well as the internal web pages, this would include the 
contents of all document management systems, with all the internal 
reports and minutes. So if you were in Treasury, you could search 
internal documents in Geoscience Australia, Transport and all the 
other agencies in one search. Obviously you would not be permitted to 
search documents which you were not permitted to see for reasons of 
national security or privacy. But just because you do not happen to 
be working in the same government agency is not a valid reason to 
block access to the information.

That is not the most radical proposal around, the "Be Honest, 
Minister! RESTORING HONEST GOVERNMENT IN AUSTRALIA", report proposed 
"all documents created by government organisations to be 
automatically uploaded and published on websites at the time of their 
creation" 
<http://arts.anu.edu.au/democraticaudit/misc/aspgbehonestminister.pdf>. 
In that case as soon as the public servant saved their internal 
report to the server it would be posted to the agency public web site 
for anyone to see. My public service students were horrified by the 
idea <http://tomw.net.au/moodle/mod/assignment/view.php?id=108>. This 
mades the ALP's proposal for an Office of the Information 
Commissioner look mild in comparison. At least in that case it would 
only be other public servants rummaging through departmental files, 
not journalists and the general public 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/10/office-of-information-commissioner.html>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, ANU