[LINK] lack of dates on Ausgov pages

[Jan Whitaker]

Linkers who have influence,

Here's something that bugs me about published information that is 
supposedly official from govt. Why don't they have publication dates on them?

The example from today. I get google alerts for: privacy 
site:www.australia.gov.au  . They are often years out of date as is 
evidenced by URL info that do include a date. Mostly those are 
documents associated with a particular senate hearing. Today I 
received one for something different:

Privacy & Government - australia.gov.au
Federal government agencies are required to comply with the Information
Privacy Principles (IPPs) in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) when handling
personal ...
<http://www.australia.gov.au/people/public-servants/privacy-and-government>

I went to the link. It's a nice page, lots of resources. There is no 
date to be found on the page or in the metadata. I thought AGLS had a 
publishing date field, but if there is, it's not being used.

Is it asking too much for an indicator of the date something was 
created/revised to let the reader know how timely the info is? Surely 
it's an accessible field that could be added automatically in the 
footer of the page if not at least in the metadata. I would find that 
very helpful.

Thanks,
Jan


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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