Information & Ethics committee  Thank you. It's been a pleasure. I wish you well in your inquiry in this area. Thank you.

Information & Ethics committee  I think it is occurring, and it's fairly early for me and difficult to give examples, because it's mostly anecdotal. It's fairly clear to me from just the growth in industry, the government consultation industry around Canberra itself, how many organizations now feed off government information.

Information & Ethics committee  In both areas the answer is that a balance is needed, because legitimate interests are at play. First, on the cost issue, there is no doubt that the freedom of information and open government reforms impose an additional cost on agencies in dealing with individual FOI Act requests and also in moving information onto the web and making it available in different formats.

Information & Ethics committee  It's the advantage of having an office such as mine, if I may say so.

Information & Ethics committee  It's part of the scheme surrounding the creation of my office. Now, essentially we have simply been given the same power as the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, which, until now, heard all appeals on FOI access. We've been given the same powers as it, the same powers as a court, essentially, to require a government agency to provide any documents to us, to answer any questions that we ask, and then I can make the binding ruling on whether the document is exempt under the FOI framework.

Information & Ethics committee  Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to give a very informed answer on that question. Perhaps I can say that when my office was created, bringing together FOI privacy and information policy, our skills and our expertise was in the FOI and privacy space, but I think the thing that has struck me most of all is that much of the interest within government and in the community is in the information policy space.

Information & Ethics committee  We're at a very early stage in that aspect of open government, of collection of government data sets for publication. Up until now there has been a lot of activity, but it has been fairly fragmented. Our feeling is that we've had a lot to learn from other countries. Some of the best examples are collected in a chapter in this issues paper that's available on our website called “Towards an Australian Government Information Policy”.

Information & Ethics committee  At the moment, the information is anecdotal only; we haven't received the early statistics from agencies. We do require agencies to report to us on a quarterly basis, but we're still at the anecdotal stage. The operation commenced on November 1. Anecdotally, every one of the major agencies does report that there is an increase in requests, particularly from journalists.

Information & Ethics committee  There's been no interlink there, at all. There are examples, I suppose, of policy initiatives in government that all have a common element, namely, information and technology, but there's been no connection between them. The national broadband network has been principally focused on a rollout of an optic fibre cable network around the country so that individuals have fast downloads from a fixed portal in their homes.

Information & Ethics committee  That's one of the large and substantial issues, the cost-benefit analysis, and in particular the economic and social utility of information that is published online--does it, as it's often said, stimulate innovation? One of the recommendations of the Government 2.0 taskforce is that a project be initiated to develop a methodology for measuring the social and economic utility of government information that is released to the public.

Information & Ethics committee  --that cultural attitude is being addressed better.

Information & Ethics committee  I suppose there are two points. First, under the Freedom of Information Act any person can request access to any document, and if they're denied access they can appeal to my office. My office now has a determinative power, much like a court or a tribunal, to decide whether the documents are exempt or not.

Information & Ethics committee  No, it's not. There are any number of rules on security protection. There are security classification processes. There are any number of guidelines on protection of personal information. In the first instance it rests with the government agency to apply those rules and decide what to release.

Information & Ethics committee  The government issued a policy statement last year accepting most of the recommendations. The declaration of open government I referred to earlier is an example of the government implementation of one of the recommendations. The government also established a steering group located within the Department of Finance, with representatives of different offices, including the Attorney General's department, the National Archives, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and my own office.

Information & Ethics committee  My view is it's better to have it all in one office. Privacy and FOI have grown separately for over 20 years. A tension has developed between them, understandably. One is more concerned with openness, the other is more concerned with protection and at times confidentiality. Bringing them together creates a better framework within which the tensions can be addressed.