NZ Election 2020

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#2548367 23-Aug-2020 18:51

BarTender:

Personally I think the only way to fix it would be to allow agencies to go to the ombudsman and look to charge the folks who send repeated and utterly vexatious requests. I think the Taxpayer Union is one such group as they are clearly hyper partisan, refuse to provide transparency on who funds them. I also think sites like https://fyi.org.nz/ do a great job to improve the transparency of government since you the requester makes the request public to their site so it is clear when you are taking the p.ss.

The Taxpayer Union are like any other lobby group. I would feel fine about charging people for OIA requests if governments (note the S) had not developed a culture of stretching the OIA to its very limits - any such opportunity to charge applicants would almost certainly eventually get abused by government departments. Considering the battles some people have to fight with ACC and other government departments, I'm not sure I'd want to give them another method of potentially railroading otherwise legitimate requests for things that might take years to resolve, even if it means a few dickheads get to eat for free.

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#2548370 23-Aug-2020 18:54

I'm inclined to agree. Flawed as it is, the current system is less fraught with potential abuse than the other systems. At worst we spent some extra money on frivolous information requests, which to be fair, given the amount of money being wasted in general, is a pretty small sum.

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#2548379 23-Aug-2020 19:22

GV27:

BarTender:

Personally I think the only way to fix it would be to allow agencies to go to the ombudsman and look to charge the folks who send repeated and utterly vexatious requests. I think the Taxpayer Union is one such group as they are clearly hyper partisan, refuse to provide transparency on who funds them. I also think sites like https://fyi.org.nz/ do a great job to improve the transparency of government since you the requester makes the request public to their site so it is clear when you are taking the p.ss.

The Taxpayer Union are like any other lobby group. I would feel fine about charging people for OIA requests if governments (note the S) had not developed a culture of stretching the OIA to its very limits - any such opportunity to charge applicants would almost certainly eventually get abused by government departments. Considering the battles some people have to fight with ACC and other government departments, I'm not sure I'd want to give them another method of potentially railroading otherwise legitimate requests for things that might take years to resolve, even if it means a few dickheads get to eat for free.

I agree but we should use correct names. Please refer to them as their correct name - the publicly funded troughers Tax Payers Union

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#2548380 23-Aug-2020 19:24

networkn:
I'm inclined to agree. Flawed as it is, the current system is less fraught with potential abuse than the other systems. At worst we spent some extra money on frivolous information requests, which to be fair, given the amount of money being wasted in general, is a pretty small sum.

It’s an interesting double take. On one hand you’re ok with government agencies tied up with frivolous requests under the assumption that the wider government waste is larger.
I’ve seen non trivial sized teams dedicated to dealing with OIAs.

I would really love to see all responses made public as long as sensitive information was redacted and also the number of hours as well as unique employees involved with responding to the request.
As I think you might be genuinely surprised at the number of requests and sometimes very lengthy time involved in responses.

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#2548433 23-Aug-2020 22:13

GV27: The Taxpayer Union are like any other lobby group. I would feel fine about charging people for OIA requests if governments (note the S) had not developed a culture of stretching the OIA to its very limits - any such opportunity to charge applicants would almost certainly eventually get abused by government departments. Considering the battles some people have to fight with ACC and other government departments, I'm not sure I'd want to give them another method of potentially railroading otherwise legitimate requests for things that might take years to resolve, even if it means a few dickheads get to eat for free.

You see a wall of faceless bureaucrats who don't give a stuff whereas I look at it somewhat differently. Having worked across the vast majority of government agencies over the years I see most workers are good people with a sense of duty and gravitas for the importance of their role within the agency the work at while being underpaid in comparison to private enterprise roles. Sure there are people that could work harder but they are the exception rather than the rule.

This is where the cognitive dissonance in conservatives shows itself. They want smaller government, government workers to be paid less and then complain when government services deteriorate and demand they are privatised as they will always be more effectively managed as if it wasn't a forgone conclusion that is the only logical outcome.

If anyone was serious about sorting out the health system, education, housing and retirement then they would be advocating for tax increases and raising the age of eligibility for the pension and using that money to improve services. But no one on the conservative side is talking about how to adequately and what level of taxation is required to fund all the services we desire as a first world country like that as smaller government will save the day, it's almost like they don't care about those services and only talking about them as pure lip service...... funny that.

Handle9

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#2548434 23-Aug-2020 22:21

BarTender:
GV27: The Taxpayer Union are like any other lobby group. I would feel fine about charging people for OIA requests if governments (note the S) had not developed a culture of stretching the OIA to its very limits - any such opportunity to charge applicants would almost certainly eventually get abused by government departments. Considering the battles some people have to fight with ACC and other government departments, I'm not sure I'd want to give them another method of potentially railroading otherwise legitimate requests for things that might take years to resolve, even if it means a few dickheads get to eat for free.

You see a wall of faceless bureaucrats who don't give a stuff whereas I look at it somewhat differently. Having worked across the vast majority of government agencies over the years I see most workers are good people with a sense of duty and gravitas for the importance of their role within the agency the work at while being underpaid in comparison to private enterprise roles. Sure there are people that could work harder but they are the exception rather than the rule.

This is where the cognitive dissonance in conservatives shows itself. They want smaller government, government workers to be paid less and then complain when government services deteriorate and demand they are privatised as they will always be more effectively managed as if it wasn't a forgone conclusion that is the only logical outcome.

If anyone was serious about sorting out the health system, education, housing and retirement then they would be advocating for tax increases and raising the age of eligibility for the pension and using that money to improve services. But no one on the conservative side is talking about how to adequately and what level of taxation is required to fund all the services we desire as a first world country like that as smaller government will save the day, it's almost like they don't care about those services and only talking about them as pure lip service...... funny that.

Large institutions (private or public) are all largely the same in their behaviour. Their first instinct is to protect the institution. There is ample evidence of this from the Catholic church, the ministry of health, the old Telecom and any number of cover ups by large companies. Without public transparency there is always bad behaviour from some bad actors.

This isn't about it being a government department, it's a bell curve of the population with some good, some bad and most in the middle. Transparency is the only way to ensure performance and compliance.

It's not a perfect system but the alternative is much worse.

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#2548436 23-Aug-2020 22:42

Handle9: Large institutions (private or public) are all largely the same in their behaviour. Their first instinct is to protect the institution. There is ample evidence of this from the Catholic church, the ministry of health, the old Telecom and any number of cover ups by large companies. Without public transparency there is always bad behaviour from some bad actors.

This isn't about it being a government department, it's a bell curve of the population with some good, some bad and most in the middle. Transparency is the only way to ensure performance and compliance.

It's not a perfect system but the alternative is much worse.

I completely disagree with that statement.

Having worked in Central Government (not so much local government) and NZ Private and large US companies as well as working for two orgs you named being Telecom and MoH the cultures between public and private are literally worlds apart.

Public for the most part care about their staff, accept the inefficiencies but know the importance of the function they are doing for NZ. Private companies have no qualms about firing you, and have equal or more useless managers who have risen to a position above their ability.

Again, the *ONLY* way to improve services is to throw money at it. However I am yet to hear one conservative say they would like taxes raised so that more money can be allocated to better health outcomes.

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#2548437 23-Aug-2020 22:58

Well, I can't claim to have the experience you have said you have, but I have exposure to health and education. The waste and inefficiency I have seen makes my eyes pop out of my skull. It's eye-watering.

I am what some might label a conservative (though I don't think I am, despite holding some conservative views) and I am happy for a small increase in taxes (I wasn't in favour of Nationals proposed tax cuts and you will find me saying so many times in the lead up to the election and multiple times since) and wanted that money spent on funding Health and Education. I objected to Labours increased tax on Fuel 1) because they said they wouldn't introduce new taxes and did, which is just a continuation of them failing to do what they say they will for 3 years in most ways) and b) because most that that money won't be spent on roads or public transport. My personal (uncosted) opinion is that the Government should take some of the money spent on roads, and heavily subsidize use of public transport so it's so cheap, it's impossible for those who don't have a truly legitimate reason to drive, to justify driving any more. So, you can no longer claim you've never heard a conservative say tax increases are ok. However, my caveat is, that a review is held properly into reducing 1-2% of the waste in Healthcare and Education (Hundreds of devices sent out over lockdown to people who didn't need them being 1 tiny example).

Handle9

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#2548440 23-Aug-2020 23:26

I've dealt with government departments (especially health, education and corrections) extensively as well as large New Zealand and international corporates. I work for a truly large global corporate (as opposed to the New Zealand version).

I've seen some truly heinous behaviour from government employees, including when there were life threatening incidents, and just as bad behaviour from corporates. People are people and some are good, some are bad most just want to do their job and go home to their families. I've dealt with government managers who bullied and abused their staff, including calling them all sorts of names and really putting their staff into a bad place mentally. I've seen the same from for profit managers. Some people are a-holes.

Large corporates waste huge amounts of money on much the same nonsense that government organisations do. They all have the same issues with co-ordination, communication and mismatching agendas. It's not like there is any magic pixie dust that makes government departments better or worse.

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#2548441 23-Aug-2020 23:29

Handle9:

I've dealt with government departments (especially health, education and corrections) extensively as well as large New Zealand and international corporates. I work for a truly large global corporate (as opposed to the New Zealand version).

I've seen some truly heinous behaviour from government employees, including when there were life threatening incidents, and just as bad behaviour from corporates. People are people and some are good, some are bad most just want to do their job and go home to their families. I've dealt with government managers who bullied and abused their staff, including calling them all sorts of names and really putting their staff into a bad place mentally. I've seen the same from for profit managers. Some people are a-holes.

Large corporates waste huge amounts of money on much the same nonsense that government organisations do. They all have the same issues with co-ordination, communication and mismatching agendas. It's not like there is any magic pixie dust that makes government departments better or worse.

Agreed. We have had experience with bad behaviour in healthcare beuaracrats ourselves, so it does happen for certain.

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#2548445 24-Aug-2020 00:12

BarTender:
It’s an interesting double take. On one hand you’re ok with government agencies tied up with frivolous requests under the assumption that the wider government waste is larger.
I’ve seen non trivial sized teams dedicated to dealing with OIAs.

I would really love to see all responses made public as long as sensitive information was redacted and also the number of hours as well as unique employees involved with responding to the request.
As I think you might be genuinely surprised at the number of requests and sometimes very lengthy time involved in responses.

I've actually led a team (how I became the leader of that team did not reflect well on the employment practices of that government department - might expand on that another time) as a fixed team employee that was in charge of processing all OIA/Privacy Act requests for the Auckland/Northern region of a very large government department. To repeat the obvious for those who frequent this forum: (1) I did not come from a communications background and did not view OIA/PA releases as something to be "managed" to protect the reputation of said government department and (2) given my legal background, I had a far more sophisticated and accurate understanding of the OIA/PA than most people in the department and also the requestors. At the time I had also come out of a job in private equity and wanted to get away from 95 hour weeks whilst deciding on my next career step -- they knew full well that I had the economic means to resist any pressure from the government department, as well as the very unusual opportunity of filling all the short term vacancies in that team with high quality junior/graduate lawyers who were at that time relatively easy to find despite the crappy salaries offered. Before I joined many on the OIA/PA teams were typically ex-senior operational staff jobs who "knew the department" but actually transferred some of the worst aspects of the department culture into these accountability roles.

In my experience, whilst no one in the department ever pressured us to make "funny" interpretations of the legislation in terms of withholding content, the OIA-handling practices before me and "my" team largely came on board were concerning. The presumption of openness wasn't taken seriously enough -- too much got withheld on grounds that couldn't be defended. If a requestor looked troublesome or the team might have to look at "too much" information (whatever too much meant), they automatically wrote back using a template letter extending the response timeframe. To be fair, people working on OIA releases got bombarded with way too much rubbish to process because the client relationship management/practices of operational staff were abysmal (e.g. repeated pasting/double-pasting of same e-mails/reports into same entries into the system etc whilst occasionally inserting in new content in random places). There were also numerous inadvertent privacy breaches caused by non-legally trained OIA-processors.

Nationally, that department had around 13 people at the time handling OIA/PA requests. The resources required to handle/process OIA requests often grew large because of longstanding (and often meritless) practices of the OIA teams consulting too widely as a matter of course with operational teams/site management on whether something can be released, when in most instances their views were simply irrelevant. In less than 9 months, by my estimate, my team exposed serious issues/wrongdoing that were subsequently litigated in at least 6 proceedings -- all of which were very important to the people affected and frankly none of which would have been exposed if it wasn't for the dedication and fastidiousness of many of the young professionals on that team paid like they were just irrelevant peons.

So you'll have to excuse me if I couldn't care less that occasionally government departments have to wear a bit of pain/inefficiency to further the eternal vigilance required to ensure that governance is by the people and for the people. Every large organisation, as @Handle9 told you, has its inefficiencies and spread of different personalities. It's farcical to somehow imagine that government department workers are just different. But unlike private enterprises, philosophically a liberal democracy entails governance by law and consent -- so I don't for one moment have a problem if department employees occasionally have to be inconvenienced by the odd citizen. That's one of the costs of ensuring that the coercive powers frequently exercised by government employees are lawful in nature.

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#2548509 24-Aug-2020 09:23

freitasm:

Is it their jobs to challenge the sitting government even when it's doing a good job?

Yes, constructive criticism is always valuable. However, much of the behaviour from National's senior leadership has been neither constructive nor valuable. With Gerry Brownlee and his "Interesting series of facts" or Collins and her joking eyebrow. They are just trying to dilute facts and create an environment of fear, uncertainty and doubt about the current government. It is the same kind of tactics used by the Republicans in the US and the far right in Great Britain which have given us Trump and Brexit.

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#2548513 24-Aug-2020 09:32

Varkk:

freitasm:

Is it their jobs to challenge the sitting government even when it's doing a good job?

Yes, constructive criticism is always valuable. However, much of the behaviour from National's senior leadership has been neither constructive nor valuable. With Gerry Brownlee and his "Interesting series of facts" or Collins and her joking eyebrow. They are just trying to dilute facts and create an environment of fear, uncertainty and doubt about the current government. It is the same kind of tactics used by the Republicans in the US and the far right in Great Britain which have given us Trump and Brexit.

Exactly my point.

Criticism is a valid argument. Potshots, unfounded criticisms just for the sake of appearing in front of the cameras and appeasing the crowd of journalists that need a soundbite for the click rates is not.

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GV27

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#2548536 24-Aug-2020 10:00

freitasm:

Exactly my point.

Criticism is a valid argument. Potshots, unfounded criticisms just for the sake of appearing in front of the cameras and appeasing the crowd of journalists that need a soundbite for the click rates is not.

Brownlee was a weird choice to start with and I'm not sure why they're sticking with him given the rise of Dr Shane Reti.

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#2548636 24-Aug-2020 11:37

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12358882

Apparently we're having a coup? Damn, I always miss the Outlook invites for these things.

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