Sunshine Week- a great idea still to hit our shores

It's that time of the year - well it is next week - when the US open government community, led and co-ordinated by the Association of Newspaper Editors and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press demonstrate the importance of open transparent government through Sunshine Week publicity and events.

I've been lamenting for years the absence here of a Knight Foundation to fund the start up, and a formidable team with a shared interest, prepared each year to invest time and resources to help build public awareness of the importance of the right to know. For everyone, not just the media.

 Three years ago, the coalition of media groups Australia's Right to Know organised a conference in Sydney on FOI reform, but hasn't repeated it. Or at any stage reached out to partners who might share an interest in open, participatory government. Despite the great name, ARTK's focus has been on media not citizen interests. And it's maintaining a very low profile - the last addition to published submissions on its website was in October 2009  and to the media releases list, in May 2010

By happenstance I'll be in Washington next week, attending a couple of events and renewing some contacts.

While the Queensland Information Commissioner has organised three Right to know days and the NSW Commissioner is talking about a Sydney event later this year, oh for a local equivalent of a group like these Sunshine Week partners:

American Library Association ♦ Association of Alternative Newsweeklies ♦ Association of American Editorial Cartoonists ♦ Center for Democracy & Technology ♦ Center for Public Integrity ♦ Center for Responsive Politics ♦ Collaboration on Government Secrecy ♦ Electronic Frontier Foundation ♦ First Amendment Center ♦ Investigative News Network ♦ League of Women Voters ♦ Media Law Resource Center ♦ National Association of Broadcasters ♦ National Conference of Editorial Writers ♦ National Freedom of Information Coalition ♦ National Newspaper Association ♦ National Press Club ♦ National Security Archive ♦ Newspaper Association of America ♦ OMB Watch ♦ Online News Association ♦ Openthegovernment.org ♦ Patch ♦ Project on Government Secrecy ♦ Project on Government Oversight ♦ Radio Television Digital News Association ♦ Society of Professional Journalists ♦ Student Press Law Center ♦ Sunlight Foundation ♦ Sunshine in Government Initiative

WikiLeaks early report card sees mix of bad, good and unchanged consequences

There is an interesting discussion thread on the Lowy Institute Interpreter about the implications of the WikiLeaks disclosures from a foreign affairs perspective, commencing with Rory Medcalf and his "preliminary and highly speculative judgments" that he hopes might be proved wrong in many respects. The headings say it all: Bad for diplomacy and international cooperation; Bad for the US and its allies, good for China and Russia; Bad for cohesion in the democratic world; Bad for freedom of information; Bad for diplomats and good for spooks; Bad for peacemakers; Bad for journalism; Bad for Obama and those who put faith in him; and Bad for Australia's Gillard Government.

The follow on contributions include Stephen Collins, Sam Roggeveen and Scott Burchill who see more good than bad at least potentially, and Michael Fullilove who says that while some materials are genuinely interesting and enlightening, overall WikiLeaks' conduct has been reckless.

Pre the cablegate deluge but as recently as 25 November I wrote about the necessity to move towards more openness in foreign policy and the conduct of international relations, but five days later ventured the view that the random nature and scope of the Wikileaks cable dump had changed the environment for the worse for discussion here of open government generally, whistleblower protection, and the reconsideration of our messy statute book with 500 plus secrecy provisions in Federal laws, particularly s 70 of the Crimes Act.You can add journalists' shield laws, already slowed in passage through parliament by discussion of who is a journalist, to the list. Perhaps even government copyright.

Medcalf's "Bad for freedom of information" comments are on the likely tightening effect on  information sharing within government but he adds that restrictions on providing sensitive information to the media and the public could well be tightened. Collins on this topic acknowledges there is a culture of over-classification among many Western governments, including our own, but ventures some positives from FOI act and Gov 2.0 developments:

"Yet the wholesale changes wrought on our FoI system, the introduction of the Information Commissioner and the powerful push for open licensing of public sector information will make unnecessary classification progressively more difficult. No doubt, there will be abuses, but if those seeking information and those administering it play fair, we will end up in a measurably better position than we were before. With more a more open view of the way government works, citizen satisfaction with how informed they are could act as a deterrent to unwanted information exposures."

 Things have been looking up, but...

WikiLeaks and the implications at home and abroad

Here's Professor A.J Brown and me with Carson Scott  On the Record on Sky Business today talking about WikiLeaks, whistleblowers, the right to know, and comparisons between the US and Australia.

And in this segment with James White talking about transparency in China and Australia  and what governments know- and we should know-about the performance of the economy. Including comment on the Federal Treasury's special pleading about the need for confidentiality of advice to ministers.

Mr Assange regrets...

Timing is everything. US State Department announcement yesterday:

"The United States is pleased to announce that it will host UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day event in 2011, from May 1 - May 3 in Washington, D.C. UNESCO is the only UN agency with the mandate to promote freedom of expression and its corollary, freedom of the press.The theme for next year’s commemoration will be 21^st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals’ right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information. We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age."

Neither secrecy nor openness in international affairs should be absolutes.

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration."

—President Barack Obama, January 21, 2009

This statement appears at the top of the US State Department web page headed "Open Government Initiative." The page outlines steps taken or planned in accordance with President Obama's Open Government Directive, issued coincidentally, a year ago this week.

The publication of a selection of state department cables apparently leaked by an army private who made the call on what he thought should be known more widely wasn't what President Obama had in mind. The leak, the posting of cables on Wikileaks, and the associated media coverage has changed the atmospherics of discussion about more openness in the foreign affairs field around the world, including here. "Need to know" and secrecy, on the way out for a brief moment, are coming back into the discourse as claimed vital prerequisites to the conduct of international affairs.

Wikileaks likely set back to open government cause

Regardless of whether you agree with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the latest Wikileaks document dump is "an attack on the international community," Foreign Minister Rudd's expression of extreme concern" or Attorney General McClelland calling in the police to investigate whether Julian Assange has committed a crime, the release of cables sent by US missions abroad won't help advance the cause of more openness in the foreign policy field. Random transparency of this kind will likely boost the "told you so" arguments of those who advocate more not less secrecy, making a sensible debate about the legitimate issue of the balance between those needs and openness and accountability more difficult. To date secrecy has too often trumped those other values.(Update:This AFP article canvasses these issues. Martin Dart - an "IM manager working in government in Perth"-also sees lots on the downside.)

Coincidentially (?) The Australian today reports that the Attorney General has written to media organisations proposing a national security protocol for reporting sensitive information.

Other views on the Wikileaks disclosures include Praveen Swami in The (UK) Telegraph who sees some potential for embarrassment but concludes there's "a lot more to be learned about the world around us from nothing more secret than old newspapers than from the treasures Julian Assange has brought up from the beast’s lair." And James Mann in The New Republic who observes "Wikileaks has taken us well beyond the types of disclosures that the Freedom of Information Act, for the past several decades, has provided to journalists and historians" but nevertheless confidently predicts the survival of secret diplomacy.

Information gathering in legitimate ways is a large part of what diplomats do, not evidence of spying, although you have to wonder about the instruction to US embassy officers to collect among other things credit card account numbers as part of the biographical information gathered on notables around the world.