Thank you very much.
I think for the cultural change to be fully effective, probably four elements are required. First is a strong government commitment to and sponsorship of open government reform. That has occurred at both the national and the state or provincial levels within Australia.
Over the past 12 months, the national government has been strongly committed to driving a cultural shift. For example, the minister in charge of this area wrote to the heads of all government agencies, saying that the government expected them to lead this change. I think it's significant to have that dialogue between a senior government minister and the heads of all agencies. Government commitment and strong messages are important. As part of that, I might say the government, in July last year, through the minister for finance, issued a declaration of open government that was unqualified in the commitment to change.
The second important change is to have an effective oversight body. The lesson of the past 30 years is that freedom of information reform had qualified success because there was no personal body with responsibility for ensuring that freedom of information reforms were effective. There was no FOI commissioner. By contrast, the privacy act that was enacted a few years later had, from the start, a privacy commissioner who led a strong program in ensuring privacy protection. The difference between the two was marked—privacy protection took root in a way that freedom of information never did. Indeed, it became a growing problem for open government that privacy protection was so strong and was frequently used by government agencies as an excuse for non-disclosure. The creation of a new body—the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner—was important. It means that there is a body with greater prominence, and with a commitment, a program, and resources committed to open government reform.
The third essential ingredient for the cultural change is a sign-on at the senior levels within individual agencies. One of the first things I did was to ask the secretary of our Prime Minister's department whether I could briefly address the secretaries board—which is the board of the heads of the major government departments—to ask for the opportunity to meet individually with their agencies. That was taken up, and nearly all of the major government agencies have invited me in.
I've generally stressed to them that there's no point in my appearing unless the secretary of the department, the head of the department, is there along with the other senior officers. My clear experience is that if the head of the agency is there, the other senior executives know it's important and they all turn up. I've noticed that if the head of the agency is not there within the hour or two before my appearance, a third or more of the other senior executives decide that it's not a high-priority issue. Just having that meeting with the senior executives has been important in being able to talk frankly and robustly about the challenges, the advantages, and the problems with freedom of information reform.
The fourth element for successful reform, which we're keeping an eye on, is the need for effective electronic records management in agencies. FOI was created in an era of hard-copy documents. As we know, technological change is having an unrelenting effect on government and society, and government itself has to latch on to technological change in all aspects of the information cycle. It's happening, but that's the big challenge now facing us and the government.