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Category: Han Aulby

  • Make transparency an election issue to drive change

    Transparency in government must become an election issue to bring about meaningful change, according to experts, who expressed concern about an ongoing trend towards opacity and consequence free political scandals.

    Former AFP counter terrorism officer turned political commentator Carrick Ryan, Centre for Public Integrity executive director Han Aulby and Centre for Digital Business chief executive Marie Johnson were guest experts on InnovationAus Public Interest Series webinar discussing transparency in government.

    They said there was an urgent need to galvanise voters on the issues of accountability and transparency following a raft of political scandals amid increased opacity.

    “Last year with the COVID pandemic, there was a big upward trend in the hiding of information and [more] opaque processes,” said Centre for Public Integrity executive director Han Aulby.

    “And an increase in executive power, leading to limits on parliamentary scrutiny and public scrutiny of decisions and spending.”

    Aulby’s independent think tank is monitoring the increased executive power and lack of scrutiny including how it relates to an increased “scale and regularity” of political scandals and allegations of corruption.

    “Unfortunately, none of them have been investigated or had consequence to the point that we’d like to see,” Aulby said.

    Last year saw various pork-barrelling scandals, an explosion in unaddressed FOI requests, higher than ever management consultancy fees, the continued lack of availability of real-time data on corporate donations to political parties – with the notion of federal Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) kicked further down the road.

    Such issues of integrity and accountability often do not get the ballot box attention they warrant, however, and advocates are struggling to get cut-through.

    But the growing momentum against the culture towards women in Parliament House shows how quickly the public can be engaged and, potentially, swing votes.

    “The hard part is getting in touch with those people that only think about politics, 30 seconds before they are actually voting,” Carrick Ryan said.

    “We need [those voters] to really be aware of why it’s important, why transparency and accountability is important.”

    Mr Ryan told the webinar the recent furore about the disrespect of women in politics could become a flashpoint for voters and demonstrated a potential path for the transparency issue.

    “We need that [engagement] to spread to our other issues. Some people that would in the past go ‘ordinarily I would have voted for the LNP but based on this one issue: the fact that they’re not doing a federal ICAC, the fact that they’re not transparent, that’s going to change my vote.’

    “They’re the people that we need to convince to think that way.”

    The Centre for Digital Business’ Marie Johnson agreed transparency needed to become an election issue. She also warned of a concurrent and related problem further eroding trust in government: a degradation of capabilities in the public sector.

    She argued a hollowing out of the public sector – particularly through the outsourcing to large consulting firms and tech giants – has reduced not only the sector’s internal capabilities on the sector but also the public’s trust in it to deliver safe, effective services.

    “One of the pillars of our democracy is a strong, independent and appropriately skilled public sector for the decades ahead,” Ms Johnson said.

    “Now, we have got this massive, massive gap [between public expectations and internal capabilities].”

    Ms Johnson said more transparency and accountability in government would help re-establish both the capability and perception of the public sector.

    “Not everything is corruption, some things are just unacceptable practices. Unacceptable in terms of over reliance on consultants and the hollowing out of capability in the APS. That gets a certain perception around trust.

    “It’s not necessarily corruption but it plays into the public’s lack of trust, when they see these things happen.”

    The post Make transparency an election issue to drive change appeared first on InnovationAus.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.

  • Transparency in Govt; The challenge of data

    In an era where technology and the proliferation of data is creating valuable insights for businesses and consumers to understand the world around them, our visibility of government remains stubbornly opaque.

    Certainly, there is a role for the application of technology and data analytics to better understand patterns of behaviour and to more quickly identify where problems exist. But the promise of technology has fallen well short in relation to government.

    In fact, the danger is that uncertain data governance and the application of black-box algorithms is making visibility in government decision-making more opaque.

    InnovationAus.com will host a special Transparency in Government webinar on Tuesday March 30 from 1pm to 2pm that will look at the opportunities presented by data analytic technology, the challenges of its use in public view, and the political realities that act as a handbrake on its use.

    Canberra Parliament
    Blue sky: Transparency in Government is a vexed issue, depite the information era. Credit: Linda_K/Shutterstock.com

    Hosted by InnovationAus publisher Corrie McLeod, our discussion guests are former AFP officer Carrick Ryan, who spent years on the NSW Joint Counter Terrorism team and is now an active political commentator; the outspoken former chief of the NDIS Technology Authority Marie Johnson, who is now chief executive of the Canberra-based Centre for Digital Business; and Han Aulby, the executive director at Centre for Public Integrity, an outspoken advocate on transparency issues in government.

    You can register for this public event here.

    Governments share data across agencies and departments to determine how to improve citizen outcomes in the delivery of services, or in identifying fraudulent or criminal activity, and to disrupt potential national security threats to our society.

    But we have not seen the same amount of ‘data intelligence’ applied in the operation of the public sector – both in executive government and the bureaucracy that implements its policies.

    Pork-barrelling scandals, an exploding number of unaddressed FOI requests, higher than ever management consultancy fees, and the lack of availability of real-time data on corporate donations to political parties with a federal election due in the next year.

    There is a growing gap between the use of technology by government to understand and manage citizens, and the use of technology applied to the public service itself to hold it to the same standards as the wider business community.

    Australia has a well-regarded government. Its relative success in responding to crises like the global financial crisis and COVID-19 is evidence it can perform.

    But like all organisations, the new era of data has made it harder, not easier, for an interested public to clearly understand government transactions and communications.

    Areas for discussion include:

    • How RegTech is being used across various industries to identify patterns of problematic behaviour, and the lack of appetite within government to apply this same process to its own operation
    • The role that technology can and should play in identifying government behaviour that goes against community expectations
    • How the public sector can continue to function and thrive when it is being swamped by data, like every other industry.

    Transparency in Government is an InnovationAus.com public interest webinar. The event is open. You can register to attend here.

    The post Transparency in Govt; The challenge of data appeared first on InnovationAus.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.