This thread is for formulating and discussing proposals for PPNZ's official policy on government transparency. Proposals and ideas will be collated on the wiki page Policy Committee Proposals on Government Transparency (linked)

If you would also like to discuss this topic on IRC, please raise this in the thread, and the Policy Committee will try to arrange a meeting time. To help us select an appropriate time, please ensure you update your preferences in the poll Board index > General > Polls > What time of the week should PPNZ have IRC meetings? (linked)

The process will be as follows:

• Members have the opportunity to put forward and discuss proposals
• Proposals are collated, and a last call is made for member input
• Voting instructions are posted, and voting is open for at least 5 days
• Results of the vote are posted

http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2012/06/spend ... ncy-2.html

This is highly relevant, at the very least we should be aspiring to what has already been achieved overseas. Should mean the end of pork-barreling!

Wondeful -crowd sourcing as a means of regulation. There is a buzz about this in academia. Galaxy Zoo and the whole Zooniverse of citizen science show that it works.

But why stop at tax expenditure. Financial regulation, environmental oversight, health, education and many other regulatory functions can be carried out by and/or supported by citizens looking for anomalies in data in their spare time. Problems can be flagged to the appropriate authorities and even the work of the regulatory authorities can be monitored in turn as they are often compromised by lobby groups or starved of funds to the point of ineffectiveness.

Data can be made anonymous where necessary to protect privacy and business confidentiality; and an open API can mean that many different ways to mine the data can be developed.

Government tax expenditure would be a great place to start. We just have to make sure that it is the raw data, it is kept up to date and not just figures on an non-interactive web page.

Andrew

Proposal for Anti Electronic Surveillance Policy.

I believe that the state has no right to snoop on its citizens, except when a serious crime is suspected of being committed, such crimes do not include copyright infringement, use of facebook, swearing online or saying that you hate someone online.

In other words, I don't think the fact that I

• pirate stuff,
• have thousands of friends on facebook,
• swear with friends and family online,
• frequently state that I really hate the morons who play loud music at 10am on a sunday

should give ECHELON any license to spy on my internet connections or phone connections.

Logically, we demand the same rights online that we enjoy offline.

• We want to be free to copy our music and video to other devices than the discs we may have bought them on.
• We want to socialise freely with people and not have our private conversations recorded by the state just because it can.
• We'd like to say "fuck off" to the spammers and the cold-callers we get.
• Free speech is more important legally than trying to ban hate speech.

Well put.

kiwipeso, I'd even have every Government employee's pay details available. Other countries alread do this.

http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2012/06/schoo ... ables.html
Pleased to see that, more data being opened up a little.


Also agreed!

Here's an attempt to pull out themes from the policy of other parties regarding transparency:

Who

• government: 19 parties (Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Czech, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain Catalonia, Switzerland, UK)
• local government: 4 parties (Australia, France, Greece, Portugal)
• decision bodies/committies: 2 parties (Czech, Switzerland)
• political parties: 2 parties (Finland, Switzerland)
• officials/politicians personally: 4 parties (Belgium, France, Switzerland, UK)
• law enforcement: 1 party (Australia)
• companies with government support: 3 parties (Finland, France, Kazakhstan)

What

• laws/regulations: 6 parties (Australia, Austria, Finland, Germany, Greece, Slovenia)
• discussion/reasoning/minutes of meetings: 9 parties (Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Czech, Finland, Greece, Portugal, Switzerland, UK)
• international agreements have same requirements as standard bill: 2 parties (Greece, UK)
• accounts: 5 parties (Czech, Finland, France, Germany, Portugal)
• assets: 2 parties (Czech, France)
• lobbying: 1 party (Australia)
• obligations of authorities: 1 party (Australia)
• contracts/tenders/recruitment: 2 parties (Czech, Greece)
• business interests: 1 party (Switzerland)
• wiretapping etc. disclosed to targets: 1 party (Belgium)
• exceptions such as personal rights, national security, prevention of crime, operational secrets: 3 parties (Portugal, Germany, Greece)

How

• on the Internet: 6 parties (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech, Slovenia, Spain Catalonia)
• digitized: 1 party (Greece)
• open standards: 2 parties (France, Kazakhstan)
• without DRM: 1 party (Kazakhstan)
• free use e.g. CC: 2 parties (France, Kazakhstan)
• anonymous request: 2 parties (Canada, Serbia)
• no/low cost: 3 parties (Canada, Germany, Serbia)
• clear/independent/effective/judicial process for verifying appropriate classification of material: 5 parties (Belgium, Czech, France, Germany, Greece)

When

• immediate for bank account: 1 party (Czech)
• temporarily sensative info after a period of time: 2 parties (Belgium, Greece)
• on request for more obscure info: 3 parties (Canada, Germany, UK)
• within time limit/short time: 2 parties (Germany, Greece)

Opening finances sounds good since this is already working in other countries.

I'd like to see controls on signing up to international agreements too--I guess perhaps this belong here? I previously posted it here (linked). At least either a 75% majority or a referendum, as is required for 'entrenched' legislation, since signing up to international agreements could effectively entrench legislation. [EDIT: I'm suggesting this criteria because I think it's an easy argument to make.]

Also controls on passing bills under 'urgency'. Perhaps also a 75% majority?

There are cases where exceptions would have to be made. For example if we were attacked, by Tasmania for example, waiting for a 75% majority to declare war might be a bit impractical.

It might be worthwhile to include a cost to treaty breaking e.g. an extra tax so that people would think long and hard before doing so and not do it willy nilly. It would also make them cautious about entering into them as well.

Do declarations of war generally pass by a lesser majority? I've done a brief Google search on this, but the accounts I've found aren't helpful. They seem to tend to focus on the declaration of war being announced by the prime minister or whoever, and ignore the actual decision process. I would have hazarded a guess that if a war was truly important and urgent, then there wouldn't be any problem passing it by a 75% majority, although I don't have any evidence to back this up. [EDIT: If specific narrow exceptions are necessary though, I guess I'm not opposed to this.]

There could already be significant costs to breaking treaties, which is why we ought to be cautious about entering into them in the first place. Compounding that with an artificial self-harm might change the risk assessment with regard to entering into bad treaties, but it would also make it more difficult to exit bad treaties. Also, being a leftie, I'm in favour of more tax anyway, so this would give me a reason to want to enter into and then break treaties.