Government transparency only when convenient.

Take a look at the tag cloud below, taken from the Australian Government's own taskforce into Government 2.0 - the next generation of government and internet services.

Having participated in the Gov2.0 process, to some degree, myself, I have noticed thee common and relatively core themes throughout the process.

Tag Cloud

access accessibility Best Practice Brainstorming community content contests Copyright cost Crowdsourcing data.australia.gov.au engagement gov2.0 gov2au gov20 government 2.0 government2.0 GovHack Guest Blogger Ideas IdeaScale Information Management Innovation Innovators Inquiries 2.0 Issues Paper IT licensing Mashup Australia mashups Open Access pricing Prizes Project Fund Projects PSI public service Report Roadshows social graph social media social networking standards Transparency Web 2.0

via gov2.net.au

"Engagement" - the ways in which government connect with citizens, business, people.
"Community" - the groups that make up the sectors within our society, represented by interested people.
"Open Access" - the concept of providing transparent paths to information, data, the things that government do.
"Transparency" - the simple, yet rarely seen, concept of being open, honest and without undisclosed agendas or process.

Some interesting and valuable concepts. Particularly when conscious of what Government represents, their role and the view of how technology, particularly in this day-and-age, can make a difference.

The Gov2.0 taskforce represents our Government.

Now, take a look below.

The federal government has censored approximately 90 per cent of a secret document outlining its controversial plans to snoop on Australians' web surfing, obtained under freedom of information (FoI) laws, out of fear the document could cause "premature unnecessary debate".

The government has been consulting with the internet industry over the proposal, which would require ISPs to store certain internet activities of all Australians - regardless of whether they have been suspected of wrongdoing - for law-enforcement agencies to access.

All parties to the consultations have been sworn to secrecy.

Industry sources have claimed that the controversial regime could go as far as collecting the individual web browsing history of every Australian internet user, a claim denied by the spokesman for Attorney-General Robert McClelland.

The exact details of the web browsing data the government wants ISPs to collect are contained in the document released to this website under FoI.

The document was handed out to the industry during a secret briefing it held with ISPs in March.

But from the censored document released, it is impossible to know how far the government is planning to take the policy.

The government is hiding the plans from the public and it appears to want to move quickly on industry consultation, asking for participants to respond within only one month after it had held the briefings.

via watoday.com.au

Really there is no need to comment. You can draw your own conclusions. But.

As we have seen the political parties vie for your vote in the upcoming election, we are often faced with mixed-messages, promises that may or may not be delivered, a great big "sell-job". Like the climate change agendas, as an example.

The current Labor government has announced a policy stance on climate change that will, yet again, form community based consultative groups, the so-called "citizens assembly". Some people may well see this as a good move, the idea of "engagement" and "community" on such an issue. Even I can see that it represents some of those core values of what Gov2.0 is really about. (I have other opinions of course about this particular topic, but lets leave that to other posts!).

What concerns, worries and indeed surprises me, is that, when it comes to the real issues of Gov2.0 - that is, from a technological base, all the core values the current Labor Government seem to flag as important, are thrown out the door.

Sure, you could argue that this government is "engaging" with business, service providers, political analysts, government agencies and their representatives. But.

But where is the "Citizens Assembly" on this?

But where is the "community consultation" on this?

It seems the community has the ability, knowledge, skills to have input into such a complex and sensitive issue as climate change, but not the internet.

Give me a break, this hypocritical attitude is just another reason you need to question what this current Labor Government is really all about!

Sylvestor

Update: As correctly pointed out to me, yes, ISPs have had to maintain records of its clients internet access for sometime now. This is not the point of this. There is a current agenda to look at filtering the internet to all Australians. The current view is that refused classification standards should also apply to the net. The point here is about engagement, transparency and openness in the development of government policy. It seems these concepts are being touted but only ever come into play when it is politically convenient and "safe". This is clearly hypocritical.