OnPoint by Keith Ng

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OnPoint: Government Portfolios for Dummies

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  • Ross Mason,

    PDFs are scanned and not searchable, etc.

    YES!

    I have complained all the way to the Government IT Guru about this. They will not standardise an OCR package "because they would be stepping on commercial toes".

    Thus the reason Keith has undertaken this wee project no doubt!

    Knobjobbers.

    Upper Hutt • Since Jun 2007 • 1590 posts Report Reply

  • The Ruminator,

    knobjobbers

    I enjoy this immensely. Except I once was one of these knobjobbers at a certain Government Dept. We actually moved to OCR PDFs for official correspondence. It was a big day. Lots of high fiving by us young tech savvy folk.

    Since Apr 2013 • 54 posts Report Reply

  • B Jones,

    For reasons I have yet to work out, the people responsible for creating documents aren't the people who understand why there's a difference between scanning and converting electronically to pdf. In my experience if you asked a policy analyst to prepare a document for publication on the web, the first thing they'd do (after freaking out about whether it's sensitive) is head for the scanner. One of my biggest frustrations in my previous working life is failing to break that assumption, despite working closely with policy analysts. The rest of the IT and Information Management infrastructure, who should have been all over it, worked in different parts of the building and only got talked to when something went wrong.

    I think that this is at the structural heart of this and other government information problems - yay, it's great that information tools have simplified to the point where policy analysts with minimal training can use them to put out important public information, because having to get specialist staff to do it took ages, but, boo, putting those tools in the hands of people who don't really understand how they should be used can generate chaos.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 976 posts Report Reply

  • Matthew Poole,

    Keeping better government data better than the government.
    Because why not.

    Because security through obscurity. It's much easier not to fuck up redaction and erasure of document data fields if you scan than if you do a "Save as PDF" from Office.

    Also, old documents don't give shit away to the proletariat, who, as we know, are best treated as mushrooms when it comes to knowing that the government is up to and how it pretends to function.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Stephen R,

    Making sure you don't fuck up redaction and erasure of sensitive information is quite a big deal for people in the public service. Accidentally releasing sensitive or private information is something they rightly get hammered for.

    I'm lead to believe that there aren't any standard procedures for redacting those documents, but most people know that scanning a printed document is one way to make sure that there are no unseen information being passed on.

    I don't really blame the staff for choosing to do that.

    Wellington • Since Jul 2009 • 259 posts Report Reply

  • Glenn Pearce,

    It's seems to be a fairly standard tactic for the Police to provide Defense lawyers with documents in the most unusable format possible as part of Discovery in Court proceedings.

    I'm sure this adds to the Legal Aid costs as the Defense has to wade through the documents, only the big outfits have the resources to even attempt to do anything with them.

    DocumentCloud looks interesting

    Auckland • Since Feb 2007 • 504 posts Report Reply

  • B Jones, in reply to Stephen R,

    I’m lead to believe that there aren’t any standard procedures for redacting those documents

    I've seen everything from photocopying documents festooned with "OIA tape" to blank out sensitive bits, to changing the font to white while printing, to actually sending out a document with twink over the redacted bits, which the recipient could read by scratching it off. None of these work with electronic release, of course, which is newfangled in the eyes of anyone who had to apply for their job by posting a hard copy of their CV in.

    Version control is another issue that militates against accessible documents - there's fifteen versions of a paper that's gone out for consultation, entitled everything from "xx agency final comments", "final to Min", "final to Cab", "really final", and "doc1.doc", and the best way to be sure it's the really final one is to find the one with signatures on it and head off to the scanner.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 976 posts Report Reply

  • andin,

    Keeping better government data better than the government

    This system is broken and only suits those who want to dominate everything under the guise of being even handed. Its hierarchical and a failure.
    looking at Horizontalism at the mo' There has to be a better future

    raglan • Since Mar 2007 • 1891 posts Report Reply

  • Lilith __,

    I think there's clearly a lack of basic IT literacy among civil servants. Can't this be addressed? This shit's important.

    Dunedin • Since Jul 2010 • 3895 posts Report Reply

  • B Jones,

    It's a Two Cultures problem to some extent, and a generational problem as well. People making the important decisions in policy ministries don't realise its importance because they're steeped in humanities rather than information science culture, and are mostly older and less likely to have picked up information science through having fun with computers. Whereas the IT and information management parts of the ministry might be full of competent people of all ages, they're not structurally integrated in the agency's business sufficiently to transmit their values into the rest of the agency. I haven't seen it myself, but I can imagine declaring those functions to be part of a downsizable "back office" can't have helped.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 976 posts Report Reply

  • Matthew Poole, in reply to Stephen R,

    I don’t really blame the staff for choosing to do that.

    No, but I do blame the executives (and the penny-pinching ministers) for not investing in a proper electronic document release management system that handles redaction appropriately. Such things exist, and are of sufficient reliability that they're used for releasing partially-declassified top secret documents. It's really not good enough that the default behaviour in NZ is to cheap out and use the lowest-tech, lowest-convenience course of action; not something that is in the least bit confined to the public sector.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • The Ruminator,

    Back in my day, we used to print the response, then go over the redacted bits in black vivid, then photocopy that with the toner colour all the way to DARK then scan that.

    Used to work pretty well.

    If people are sending out secrets with twink then they deserve to be revealed.

    Since Apr 2013 • 54 posts Report Reply

  • Hilary Stace,

    http://www.odi.govt.nz/resources/publications/minister-briefing/

    BIMs for Minister for Disability Issues since portfolio created. Readily available on the odi website. What's more they are probably read by a lot of people in the sector. Latest one pdf and word.

    Wgtn • Since Jun 2008 • 3229 posts Report Reply

  • Konrad Kurta,

    If some MPs compare the internet to Skynet and think file sharing is illegal, it doesn't surprise me that some government departments don't know the difference between a scanned image PDF and a text 'read only' PDF file. I honestly feel that the government shouldn't be passing laws affecting IT if they don't know any 'I' about the 'T'.

    South Korea • Since Dec 2012 • 43 posts Report Reply

  • B Jones,

    Government departments, or at least the parts of them whose business it is to know, generally do; it's just that they're made up of lots and lots of people who don't all share a skill set and don't always talk to each other, and the people who don't know are occasionally let loose on the public stage without appropriate checks and balances. And what government departments know is very different to what they can convey to government Ministers, and non-Minister MPs have even less access to expert information.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 976 posts Report Reply

  • FletcherB, in reply to The Ruminator,

    If people are sending out secrets with twink then they deserve to be revealed.

    The secrets, or the people? :D

    West Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 893 posts Report Reply

  • LeslieGoodliffe,

    Is this service likely to be any more reliable than the individual Government departments? A number of the 2008 briefing documents are in the National Digital Heritage Archive, accessible through the New Zealand Libraries' Catalogue - although the bibliographic records note that the links won't work. There is only one 2011 briefing paper so far, and I would have thought there would have been a harvest since then.

    Tauranga • Since Jul 2013 • 3 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel, in reply to Konrad Kurta,

    I honestly feel that the government shouldn't be passing laws affecting IT if they don't know any 'I' about the 'T'.

    They are using old school troubleshooting to fix that pesky democracy processor in Chchch ...
    - Turning it off, and then (hopefully) turning it on again...

    secrets with twink

    That sounds like a good read...
    ;- )

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • Ross Mason,

    It could have been worse. Twink the screen and take a picture.

    Upper Hutt • Since Jun 2007 • 1590 posts Report Reply

  • Stephen Judd,

    Nice work Keith.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 3122 posts Report Reply

  • Matthew Poole, in reply to B Jones,

    what government departments know is very different to what they can convey to government Ministers

    Particularly when said ministers are of the reputed ilk of Pull-ya Benefit, who apparently demanded that briefing documents be no more than two sides of A4.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • B Jones,

    To be fair, Ministers don't have buckets of time, and finding ways to get their attention and have an impact is always going to be a challenge. Think of the impact infographics have on public debate, vs wordy journal articles.

    But there are a number of potential roadblocks to sharing information between IT professionals and Ministers - one is that a lot of technical people have trouble communicating with a general audience, using minimal jargon. I used to get these awful emails from IT allegedly explaining a technical problem facing the network - burps of jargon so dense they'd create more anger and mockery than the problem itself. It takes work to get around those issues.

    Another roadblock is whether the IT/knowledge management people are plugged in, in the right way, to the way the state sector decides how it does things. I think this is probably closer to the heart of things. But it takes leadership to see how to do this and make changes accordingly.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 976 posts Report Reply

  • Keith Ng, in reply to LeslieGoodliffe,

    Is this service likely to be any more reliable than the individual Government departments?

    It looks more haphazard that my own efforts...

    http://nzlc.natlib.govt.nz/vwebv/search?searchArg=briefing+for+incoming+ministers&searchCode=GKEY%5E*&limitTo=&recCount=25&searchType=1&page.search.search.button=Search

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 543 posts Report Reply

  • Keith Ng, in reply to B Jones,

    People making the important decisions in policy ministries don't realise its importance because they're steeped in humanities rather than information science culture, and are mostly older and less likely to have picked up information science through having fun with computers.

    That's why I reckon the best way forward might be to just make stuff like this, to demonstrate that it takes one guy, zero dollars and most of an afternoon to build a searchable all-of-govt (well, most-of-) archive.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 543 posts Report Reply

  • Keir Leslie,

    Are senior advisers mostly from a humanities back ground? I don't actually think that's true, I suspect they trend social science / administration / harder sciences in general.

    Since Jul 2008 • 1452 posts Report Reply

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