Uncategorised 12th September 2016

Interim Working Group gets down to business

by Peter Timmins

Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has published information about the first meeting of the Interim Working Group established to assist with the development of Australia’s National Action Plan including papers distributed to participants and minutes, and an outline of the process through to completion.

It was a positive meeting with government and non government participants agreeing that the objective is an ambitious plan of reform commitments.

This list of 11 possible commitments on the table is yet to be fully discussed and most items are yet to be agreed, shaped into final form and spelt out in detail. New proposals may also emerge.

  • Work towards compliance with the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.
  • Explore options for a beneficial ownership register for companies.
  • Improve whistle-blowers protections in the corporate sector, noting the Government’s commitment to improve protections for whistle-blowers who report tax misconduct to the Australian Taxation Office.
  • Assess Australia’s compliance with the Open Contracting Data Standard.
  • Improve the availability and use of public data.
  • Establish metrics to assess public utilisation of information access rights.
  • Create, manage and preserve informational digitally to support transparency, accountability and citizen engagement.
  • Improve disclosure of grants information.
  • Explore options to improve public participation and engagement in Commonwealth policy development and decision-making.
  • Establish a permanent mechanism for OGP consultation during implementation of the National Action Plan.
  • Support government agencies to digitally transform high volume services

As the minutes record:

“Members also agreed to discuss the feasibility and details of the following proposals raised by civil society members:

  • Enhancing the National Integrity System, including matters such as an upgrade of the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity into an Australian Integrity Commission, bringing the regulation of political campaign funding up to international better practice, and supporting integrity reforms by the Houses of Parliament.
  • Review and reforming access to information laws and practices.”
The Group will meet again on Tuesday 13 September (agenda and some papers) and again on Monday 20 September.
Either through the working group or at the initiative of the Network Steering Committee we are looking to organise some gatherings that will keep you in the picture and provide an opportunity for discussion and debate about Australia’s OGP national action plan.