Macquarie University now committed to a more open and transparent public sector

Macquarie University may have left behind the uncertainty of the past detailed in the Information Commissioner's report, with this Announcement on Friday (hat tip to a reader) of a commitment to the NSW Government Information (Public Access) Act which "grants new rights of access to meet community expectations for a more open and transparent public sector." Parliament passed the law in June 2009. It came into effect from 1 July 2010:

We are committed to ensuring we meet the requirements of the GIPA Act and that we appropriately respond to other requests for information. As demonstration of this commitment, we have:
• completed, and published on the web (see http://disclosure.mq.edu.au/), a publications guide
• developed and published training material, and commenced training staff in GIPA Act compliance
• collected contractual information into a centralised database ready for publishing on the web
• aligned our internal records management policies to include the GIPA Act
• maintained a Disclosure Log as a record of information that  Macquarie University has already released
• incorporated required GIPA statistics into the annual report
• received and processed GIPA applications since July 2010.

Contracts on the Contracts Register and the Disclosure Log or other Open Access Information are yet to be published.

The Information Commissioner wanted a statement of commitment publicly and to staff, and a report on processes to promote compliance about now, and plans an audit in September.