[@OKau] OpenAus Accountability Survey

Fri Jan 22 21:35:17 UTC 2016

Hi all,

Welcome to another busy year in open knowledge, transparency & accountability. To kick it off I've put together a survey. I aim to map the eco-system of transparency/accountability in Australia. I hope everyone from people who have shared social media posts to those who run transparency organisations will have input as it is all valuable to providing an overall picture of what is going on in Australia across all issues.

The crowdsourced lists of tool people use to investigate transparency issues, government and non-government agencies (Q4) and ideas to improve accountability included in (Q3) should provide interesting feedback to those interested in transparency and provide to share tools & ideas with the wider community. This input is not tagged to specific users so if your org/agency/idea is already on one of these lists it does not have to be re-entered. Try to avoid abbreviations as not everyone using the site will know what the acronyms stand for.

The survey is at https://infoaus.net/openaus/survey.php with more info on the registration page at https://infoaus.net/openaus/registration.php

The background is at https://openaus.net.au/blog/2016/01/22/openaus-accountability-survey/

(published 22 Jan)

Last night I, along with other transparency activists were mentioned in an interview for ABC Radio PM<http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2015/s4392511.htm> regarding our work improving transparency and openness for all Australians.

@ChiefDisrupter<https://twitter.com/ChiefDisrupter> @Info_Aus<https://twitter.com/Info_Aus> @craigthomler<https://twitter.com/craigthomler> @foiguru<https://twitter.com/foiguru> and here it is [??]  https://t.co/IARZGAikpP

— Paul (@davispg) January 21, 2016<https://twitter.com/davispg/status/690143307406639105>

For those who do not know, I have been working unpaid on research tools<https://openaus.net.au/contribute.php> to track government spending for the last three years. The last six months saw me take my work to the next level by undertaking the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme as a means to fund my ongoing work. NEIS provides the same income as NewStart for nine months and I am in the last 3 months of this program whereupon OpenAus will either sink or swim.

My last blog post<https://openaus.net.au/blog/2015/12/15/openaus-up-for-review/> explained I was going in for my quarterly review with my NEIS mentor who, as it turned out, was happy to keep me on NEIS for the final months but given my takings have fallen short of the requirement (to replace NEIS income of $300pw) I was asked to carry out research<https://infoaus.net/openaus/survey.php> of my audience. I have taken to this task with alacrity, both from a technical and political perspective.

I decided to code up the survey<https://infoaus.net/openaus/survey.php> from scratch rather than use Survey Monkey. I'm glad I did as it gave me some much-needed perspective on my work to date. Coding up a survey<https://infoaus.net/openaus/survey.php> from scratch in a couple of weeks is by no means a simple endeavour however it appeared a lot easier than what I normally do and so gave me a sense of achievement I normally find lacking.

My normal day's work is building research tools to map government spending patterns - in effect creating new data. An example is listing tender recipients that are also political donors. It might sound straight forward conceptually, but the reason it has not been done to date is due to the technical complexity of such a task. The data quality makes this especially challenging as when data sets are created, the ends to which activists such as myself would like to put them was not originally envisioned (then again perhaps they were!).

Commonwealth tenders data has ABN but not program name. Commonwealth grants data has program name but no ABN. Organisation names and locations have multiple spellings, PO Boxes are used instead of street addresses, etc. Political donations data does not have ABN/ACN either.

Ideally it is desirable to be able to search the budget data<https://openaus.net.au/budget/all_agencies.php> by program and get all the tenders<https://openaus.net.au/commonwealth/tenders/index.php?agency=Department+of+Health&submit=Go> and grants paid out under each program. Or find all the organisations receiving both tenders, grants and who are also political donors<https://openaus.net.au/donations.php>. The missing data fields and poor quality of such open data make this a very difficult task. I often interact with the government to seek to improve data quality either through IdeaScale<https://datagovau.ideascale.com/> (where the public can make data requests & give feedback), by directly contacting agencies or even directly contacting MP's<https://openaus.net.au/blog/?s=indigenous>.

I find the government very cooperative with my requests or enquiries however there is a long road ahead in terms of shaping government data in ways that is actually useful to improve transparency and I need your engagement and support to continue this important work.

The next few weeks are make or break for me. OpenAus is a massive project and can not be done in anyone's spare time. It has become too much work to do as a hobby or on any basis other than full time and then some. I can not continue to work like this and live in poverty. I am not implementing projects coded up by large numbers of otherwise-employed professionals. These projects do not do what my projects do which is why I have to design and code from scratch.

If I am unable to continue this will be a huge loss. There is no eco-system providing financial support to transparency projects. Projects like mine tend to veer away from government funding (to remain independent politically) and do not reflect the priorities of the venture capital<http://datastart.wpengine.com/> ideology. As such there is a funding challenge in grassroots transparency projects in Australia that can only be filled by the citizens.

I have always believed that citizens should play a role in supporting the transparency they demand. Having said that, I understand that not everyone can go out and do the work. In fact, the reason these projects are so few is because they require a range of expertise which is highly sought after. People with the necessary skills find well-paid employment and there is no incentive for them to risk their mortgage to build systems for transparency in the hope that the community will decide to keep them in the manner to which they are accustomed.

I can well understand their logic however I am hopeful that Aussies will get behind what I have done by looking at the 'Ways you can help<https://openaus.net.au/contribute.php>' page, by donating or purchasing a subscription to the paid services, take part in the survey<https://infoaus.net/openaus/survey.php> & discussion. The investment has been made so it's now over to the community to decide whether we want this work to move continue to move Australia toward a more open and accountable society.

Rosie Williams BA (Sociology)
________________________________________
 NoFibs.com.au<http://nofibs.com.au> - Open Data Reporter | OpenAus<https://openaus.net.au> - Founder and Developer

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