[LINK] Sydney Metro Website Still Available Online

[Tom Worthington]

Media reports indicate concern that the website of the abolished Sydney 
Metro Authority is no longer publicly available. However, it has been 
cached by Google (3 Feb 2010 01:06:28 GMT): 
<http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:EJPhTRFxEiIJ:www.sydneymetro.nsw.gov.au/+http://www.sydneymetro.nsw.gov.au/&hl=en&strip=1>.

I suggest the NSW government adopt the practice of the Federal 
Government and retain such web pages at their original address, but add 
a header to indicate the material is no longer current. This practice 
was adopted when there was the first change of government after adoption 
of the web by government (I recall the interdepartmental meeting where 
it was discussed).

Also the National Library of Australia might like to put a copy in their 
Pandora Archive <http://pandora.nla.gov.au/>.

Obviously details of a failed project which wasted hundreds of millions 
of dollars is an embarrassment to the NSW government, but attempting to 
suppress the information is unlikely to improve the situation.


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... Greens transport spokeswoman Lee Rhiannon is concerned the archiving 
of Metro-related documents, which is already under way, increases the 
risk that important information will disappear from the public record.

''What's not clear is what material will be available to the public now 
the website has been taken down. The minister needs to give a clear 
public guarantee that the archiving process is being co-ordinated 
properly and that all material on the public record will remain on the 
public record,'' she said. ...

From: "Call for inquiry over $500m poured into doomed Metro",
DANIELLE TEUTSCH AND MATTHEW BENNS, SMH, March 21, 2010: 
<http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/call-for-inquiry-over-500m-poured-into-doomed-metro-20100320-qn7b.html>.
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-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/user/3890