Stilgherrian » Transparency

The $400 Billion Gift

Stilgherrian — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:02:01 +0000

Catching up on news from earlier this week, I’m astounded to read the real reason the US stock market rallied: “The US Taxpayers just lent the Biggest Banks and Hedge Funds in New York $400 Billion in exchange for ‘mark to market valued’ sub prime mortgage securities that are probably nearly worthless (being so far down on the claims chart in a bankruptcy). This is a ’silent bailout’ of the Republican’s biggest contributors that is going to be much more expensive than the S&L Rescue package of the early 90s. At least Bush Sr proposed the S&L bailout in the sunlight. Bush Jr, Paulson and the Fed are doing the bailout without asking our permission. What does ‘pork barrel’ John McCain think of this corporate welfare?”

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Honesty is the best policy

Stilgherrian — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:19:14 +0000

“I supposed at least he was honest,” said Duncan Riley when he passed on this story (pictured).

I’ll reproduce the text here so the search engines find it — which may or may not be a Good Thing. My website ends up in enough weird searches as it is.

Burglary

A 38-year-old Cole Avenue man reported that his home was invaded on Sept. 9. The man said that he was sitting home alone masturbating and watching a pornographic movie when a man came down into the basement, holding a gun, and started to videotape him. The man said that before he left, the intruder fed his dog some mushrooms and the dog died.

The story is supposedly from The Beacon Journal, Sunday 21 September 2003. If it’s a fake, someone’s gone to a lot of trouble.

Now, is this the weirdest crime story you’ve heard recently? Please, links to even weirder ones!

OK, that’s set the tone for the day…

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Australia 2020: The Disillusionment

Stilgherrian — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:15:37 +0000

When Chairman Rudd announced the Australia 2020 Summit the euphoria kicked in like a clean hit of a fresh new political drug. After 11 drab years of John Winston Howard, Change! Big, bright colourful change with sparkly bits and the sound of a thousand sitars! But now the euphoria’s wearing off. We’re coming down — and the Main Event is still a month away.

Kevin still looks pretty cheerful, though, doesn’t he. Why is that?

Look back through everything I’ve written so far and you can see the moodswing. “Chairman Rudd’s got a clever strategy going,” my first post began. Another post was headlined Australia, let the Enlightenment begin!, quoting Maxine “Toadslayer” McKew and agreeing that the nation was ready to start a new conversation about its destiny. At the end of February I even nominated myself.

Given Rudd’s claim that his government would be open and transparent, and develop policies based on evidence, it all sounded pretty good.

As days go by, however, it’s become increasingly clear that the potential of the event will be stifled by the political “need” to placate the same old whinging lobby groups, the same old middle-class middle-aged white men in dark suits (just flick through the Steering Committee) and, it seems, the “need” to pre-load the agenda with specific topics to… well, let’s explore that.

There’s two brilliant critiques of the process so far. Please, read them in full before continuing — though I’ll give you a summary here if you’re in a hurry.

The ABC’s Media Watch ran a story this week, I’m having a Summit and you’re invited, which highlighted Rudd’s technique of openly inviting specific high-profile journalists and getting key media outlets to nominate “ordinary Australians” — ensuring they’d be supportive.

In the past couple of weeks, the Prime Minister’s Office has invited twenty media organisations — they’ve sent us a list — to select a reader, listener or viewer and to pay for them to go to Canberra.

That’s not including News Ltd’s big kahuna, John Hartigan, who of course is chairing one of the summit sessions.

It’s not surprising that News Ltd papers have eagerly joined the search for summiteers.

Like Sydney’s Daily Telegraph…

“You can help shape our future”
— Daily Telegraph, You can help shape our future, 3rd March, 2008

Australia’s 1000 “best and brightest” is gradually diluted.

Meanwhile, the Centre for Policy Development’s article Beyond the 2020 Summit asks us to imagine what we actually do after this magic weekend.

You would think that the Government’s stated objectives for the Summit would be a good place to start. Here we scrutinise just two: harnessing the best ideas across the nation and producing options for consideration by Government.

Objective: To harness the best ideas across the nation.

This might be difficult to measure and doing so will be a very long-term exercise. For those who missed out on their opportunity to present their ideas at all, it is probably a sore point. Candidates had to write 100 words to justify their inclusion and many with wonderful ideas would not have considered themselves worthy of consideration. From amongst those bold enough to apply, can we be certain that the Steering Committee did not filter out potentially radical ideas in their participant selection process? No matter how open-minded the selectors, it is certain that the Summit was a select group rather than a genuine opportunity to generate the best ideas Australians could offer.

Objective: To produce options for consideration by the Government.

This is hardly a firm commitment to do anything in particular with the ideas. As well, there was a promise that a public response would be produced by the end of 2008. The decision-making process is hardly transparent; it is not clear who will decide which ideas are capable of being shaped into concrete policy responses. This objective, unfortunately, will most likely lead to contributors at the Summit passively awaiting the Government’s response. Moreover they will be unaware of how the output of the Summit will be processed. Of course they are the ‘lucky’ ones. Those who never made it, especially those who will potentially be affected by policy responses emanating from the Summit, will feel even more obsolete.

The authors rather wish that the Summit’s objectives had instead been modelled on some principles on best practice in community engagement that are expressed in The Brisbane Declaration 2005, endorsed by over 2000 attendees from 44 countries of the International Conference for Engaging Communities, a conference hosted by the Queensland Government and the United Nations.

The CPD proposes what some people may think a radical solution for the follow-up. Instead of bureaucrats analysing the options behind closed doors, you choose 100 random citizens for each policy area and have them evaluate the ideas.

The randomly-selected citizens are presented with ideas from the Summit and able to obtain clarification from the authors. Rather than just private submissions lodged through the Summit website, all Australians are encouraged to participate in e-panels (electronic issues-based forums) that simultaneously discuss the ideas. The randomly-selected citizens have access to all these views as well, including new ideas or concerns that emerge.

This is remarkably similar to an idea first floated by futurist Alvin Toffler in his 1970s book The Third Wave: if you truly want parliament to represent the people, you could just choose a representative sample of the people. Randomly. It’s one of many fascinating ideas he runs through.

It’s also remarkably similar to Mark Pesce’s proposal, How to listen to 21 million voices.

Hey, I think they might be onto something here. Open, transparent policy development!

Gosh.

Now I’ve already written how I don’t think “representation” should be the model for selecting participants, but this seems a great way of involving everybody.

So, Dear Chairman Rudd and well-suited Steering Committee members (and Cate Blanchett), you have a choice.

Treat the Australia 2020 Summit as a political exercise to create the perception of a new long-term vision for Australia and pat yourselves and a smiling PM on the back.
Actually harness the potential of new ideas. Use some of the best resources of our nation — our minds, our wonderful, varied multicultural and multi-experienced minds, all of them! — to process and filter and come up with something really new. You could even use the Summit to showcase the kind of open, transparent, evidence-based government you’ve been talking about.

So far, alas, it looks like you’re choosing the same old cynical, corrupt Option 1.

Binge drinking is guaranteed a spot on the agenda, apparently. Important perhaps, yes, but I’d have thought the topic panels would decide their own agenda — you know, fresh ideas from the panellists to think “outside the box”.

How many other topics have already been loaded this way?

Well, we don’t know, because there’s been no news from the summit secretariat in a fortnight! You think there’d be something to say, even if it was just to confirm officially how many nominations you’d received, how far you are through the selection process, when we’ll know who’s selected, whether you’ve chosen the tenderer to run the event yet, when the timetable for the summit will be announced — that sort of thing.

We can accept that this is all being made up as we go along. After all the world is made up as we go along. In the 21st Century, though, some of us are used to seeing that “background chatter” as things get done. It helps reassure us that things actually are getting done — and done honestly — even though it might not be fully polished and glistening in the sun yet.

Wow, there’s transparency for you.

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Is it really so wrong to mix business and politics (and religion)?

Stilgherrian — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:00:24 +0000

So last week Apple announced new products. Yawn. The Cult of Apple worshipped their God, and millions of words were written praising His Wisdom. However the most interesting comment I’ve read so far was about the political content of Steve Jobs’ presentation.

Alastair Rankine writes that the Macworld Keynote has moved from slick-but-reality-distorted marketing into the realms of straight-out entertainment, and then criticises Randy Newman’s performance. Not because it was crap (which, being Randy Newman, is inevitable), but because it was political.

Criticism of the Bush administration is something I obviously have a lot of time for. But is it suitable for a consumer product launch? …

Mix politics with business and you take a risk with a relatively small upside but a big downside. If your politics match mine, we are no more likely to do business together than before we knew each other’s positions. But if our politics disagree, this difference becomes a barrier that we each have to overcome in order to do business together.

I’m not arguing for censorship or anything. I’m just saying that the separation of politics and business is crucial for the success of both.

I disagree.

Business is about making money, yes, but sometimes I think it’s wrong to “leave politics at the door”. In fact, is it even possible?

Here’s how I responded on Alastair’s website:

Deciding to continue doing business with someone even though you disagree with their political aims is a political decision: a decision to wimp out and fail to pursue your own political goals. A decision to support your political enemy because money is more important to you than your principles.

Mind you, I fail to live up to my own high-sounding rhetoric.

I faced an ethical dilemma. I discovered that one of my clients is run by members of Hillsong Church — an organisation which worries me. Did I stop working for them? No. Or at least I haven’t yet. However I have turned down a project which would have been working directly with the Church’s own business interests.

On the other hand, can I be accused of religious discrimination? Perhaps. How would it have sounded if I said “I don’t work for Jews”?

It’s presumably OK to say “I don’t work for the baby-sacrificing Turnip Cult”, though, so where does one draw the line?

Was Apple wrong to include political commentary in a product launch? (Did that happen because Al Gore is an Apple board member?) Where does one draw the line between business and politics (and religion)?

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Petitions might finally make a difference

Stilgherrian — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 02:43:13 +0000

Maybe those annoying socialists on King Street will finally achieve something with their endless petition-signing. Chairman Rudd will require parliament to formally consider and report on all petitions.

More than a million Australians signed 900+ petitions during Howard’s final three-year term. A grand total of 2 were responded to in some way. The other 99.8% were tabled and ignored.

My local MP Anthony Albanese, the “manager of government business” in parliament, says petitions won’t need to be sponsored by an MP any more. He reckons citizens have a basic right to petition parliament. And they’ll look into electronic petitions too.

That, and Julia Gillard’s announcement that NGOs receiving government funds would no longer be prevented from making political statements, are clear sings that maybe Kevin Rudd actually means what he says about strengthening the parliamentary system.

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Liar, Coonan, Liar!

Stilgherrian — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 05:04:39 +0000

Well surprise surprise! The (former) government’s campaign to promote their dodgy NetAlert filter — it was cracked by a teenager, after all — over-stated the risk to kids on the Internet. And Senator Helen Coonan seems to have fibbed about what was in the government-commissioned report.

One advertisement said a survey had shown that more than half of 11-15-year-olds who chatted online were contacted by strangers…

[Coonan] refused to make the research public, saying it contained personal information. The Age has obtained the research, a survey prepared by the Wallis Consulting Group, under freedom of information laws. It does not contain any personal information…

[The claim] regarding stranger contact does not appear in the government-commissioned research. The question was not posed in this form. Participants were asked: “When chatting online, have you ever been contacted by someone you haven’t met in real life?” More than half answered “yes”.

So, a “stranger” is anyone you chatted with online, even a friend of a friend, who you just haven’t met physically. A “contact” could have been spam. Gee, we all have them, don’t we?

The duplicity of Coonan’s statement is the conflation of “someone you haven’t met before” with “stranger” with “danger”. The pre-existing alliterative “stranger danger” meme made it even easier to promulgate this campaign of fear.

If someone’s mind already includes “stranger danger”, and you use loose terminology to say that anyone you haven’t met in “real life” before (as if people become non-real when your communication is electronic?) is a “stranger”, then instead of the perfectly reasonable “half of the kids have met a new friend online” you suddenly have “half of the kids have been approached by a dangerous paedophile”. Hardly the same thing.

There was an interesting discussion on the Link mailing list this morning. Some people have criticisms of my argument. But the “stranger danger” meme is just wrong.

As one fact sheet on child sexual abuse says:

A study in three states found 96% of reported rape survivors under age 12 knew the attacker. 4% of the offenders were strangers, 20% were fathers, 16% were relatives and 50% were acquaintances or friends…

In up to 50% of reported cases, offenders are adolescents. In 82% of accusations recently studied the accused offender was a heterosexual partner of a close relative of the child’s.

So, the NetAlert campaign promoted a completely inaccurate stereotype of the “risky people”. The typical offender is an adolescent “known to the victim”. But if you’re over 45 and male, don’t dare pause on your afternoon walk to smile with joy at the sight of kids playing in the park, and especially dare not ask “How’s the soccer going?”

I find it truly disgusting that saying hello to a fellow human being, of whatever age, is immediately treated with suspicion. That kind of paranoia can’t be good for society. Is that really the world we want to live in?

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“Let’s just write that down…”

Stilgherrian — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 22:28:20 +0000

Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson reckons Australia needs a Bill of Rights. I reckon he’s right about rights. And that’s because the central issue reminds me of when we were running The Core magazine…

The Core’s sole source of income was advertising, and most of it came from nightclubs. Nightclub managers are [coughs] the most honourable and [chokes] reliable [gargles] businessmen and women who can be found. Their integ… [coughs] [chokes] … sorry, I seem to have something caught in my throat.

They’d brag about how their new club night would be the biggest, brightest thing ever. “It’ll be huge,” they’d say. They’d want to book a heap of advertising — on credit, of course — and wanted discount.

“Sure,” I’d say, showing them our rate card and the discounts on offer.

“We’ll book a full page for 8 weeks then, for that 25% discount,” or whatever it was.

“Sure,” I’d say again. “Just sign here.”

And then they’d freeze.

“What’s this?” they’d ask nervously.

“Oh this is just our standard advertising booking form, showing what we just agreed. It says that you’re booking a full page for 8 weeks, and you’ll get a 25% discount — and that if you don’t run for 8 weeks, or don’t pay on time, the price reverts to the normal rate. Just sign there at the bottom.”

And that’s when they’d start mumbling about having to see how things went, or they had to check with the owner, or where did I leave those car keys…

Verbal agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re written on, as the saying goes. If I’m doing business with the reptiles that run nightclubs, I’ll make sure there’s a written record. If you’re genuine about sticking to your side of the bargain, then writing it down shouldn’t be the least bit controversial.

The same goes for politicians.

Especially politicians who come up with ideas like non-core promises.

If, as the Citizenship Test says, we have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equality under the law and so on, how about we just write that down? If we’re genuine about “Australians having rights,” there can’t be anything wrong with putting it on paper, and signing it into Law.

Last night Geoffrey Robertson reminded us that Australia had fallen to 35th and 39th in the two latest international press freedom ratings. Today, I’m sure some redneck talkback callers are saying a Bill of Rights will destroy the church or somesuch paranoid rant. They are simply wrong. A Bill of Rights would protect their chosen religion too.

If anyone opposes a Bill of Rights, they’re not genuinely interested in human rights for others, only for themselves. It’s as simple as that.

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Being Real: more notes on radical transparency

Stilgherrian — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 23:25:06 +0000

Information Architects Japan have published a great guide to What Works on the Web — a good read for anyone wanting to do business online.

One section touches upon what I’ve been calling radical transparency — something which can shock clients more used to their suppliers spinning bull.

The openness with which we communicate here is not common. It has gotten some people suspicious and angry. We talk about clients that screwed us over (without mentioning their name, or even giving hints of course), contracts we didn’t get because we were not good enough, we shoot against people that are potential clients, we mess with one of the lungs of the blogosphere and one of the biggest marketing agency in the world started to get nervous after we opened fire against them and their unprofessional dubious practices.

This openness is to a certain degree an experiment, to a certain degree unavoidable, as it goes back to the character of iA’s peculiar owner. iA’s openness is based on the assumption: That being real works better that being virtual. In the so called virtual world as well as in the real world. Yes, in the business world as well: Because if you show your clients who you are, you are more likely to get the ones that understand you.

The definite reality check on that one is yet to come. But we are pretty optimistic.

I’ve written about transparency before, but it’s great to find a like-minded firm. Hat tip to Zern Liew.

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Scaring the shit out of clients

Stilgherrian — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 22:56:58 +0000

It was Oscar Wilde or G B Shaw or — oh, somebody interesting — who, when accused of shocking people, replied to the effect that people should be shocked a good deal more often. Or offended. Anyway, I can’t find the right quote so here’s a different one.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

That’s Wilde.

Yesterday we ruffled a client’s feathers. We were invited to tender for a web development project. Our response was, in essence, “Yeah we’re interested — but not if you’re going to do it that way. We don’t think that’ll work because [reasons]. We strongly recommend doing it [some other way]. Before we go any further, is it cool for us to tender that way, knowing that’s not what you asked for? Oh, and here’s the keys to our intranet, so you can see the dialog which led to this conclusion.”

Bang!

Someone’s worldview was gunned down ruthlessly! Politely, but we did use phrases like “high-risk death march”.

Now I should say that one of us worked with this client for almost a decade and the other has worked with them on two projects in the last year. So our comments were based on some knowledge of the organisation and its needs as well as our own professional opinions. Nevertheless, what we said was shocking.

I’ve always wondered why clear, direct communication is so rare in business. People seem almost afraid to say what they mean. “Don’t upset the client!” So a recommendation like “Process A is dangerous and you should change that immediately or risk almost certain failure” becomes a mealy-mouthed “Is everyone happy with the assumptions relating to Process A?”

All urgency is drained away. The project continues flying serenely towards the looming mountain.

But don’t upset the client.

If your recommendation is for major change, when do you broach the subject? Sign up to the “wrong” concept of the project and then try to change it? Leave it until people have spent more time going down the wrong path, and the deadline is closer? No, something so important should be communicated as soon as possible.

Organisations aren’t used to people speaking quite so directly. When it happens, it’s like a splash of iced water into the face. And sometimes, that splash into alertness is precisely what’s needed.

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Releasing the Black Hawk crash video was A Good Thing

Stilgherrian — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:07:27 +0000

An open letter to family and friends of those who died in the crash of the Black Hawk helicopter on HMAS Kanimbla, and to those who survived.

I understand why you didn’t want the crash video made public. Every time you see it, you’ll re-live that crash. And every time, you’ll feel that black void of horror creeping back up into your mind. The horror may stay with you for years. It’s pretty fucked, I know.

But despite the on-going pain it inevitably causes, I think it’s not only reasonable that such videos be made public, I think it’s essential.

In 1992, there was another accident. During an army live-fire exercise, an assault rifle accidentally discharged and a soldier died. A very good friend of mine was holding that rifle. And while both a military inquiry and a civilian coronial inquest agreed it was an accident and found my friend blameless, the post-traumatic stress and guilt stayed with him for years — to the point where it became unbearable and he hanged himself at the end of 1996.

His parents were devastated. I wasn’t too thrilled either, having cut him down from the tree in my back yard and, later, helped carry him to his grave.

Some of us reckon the army hadn’t taken proper care of one of their own. The 2005 Senate inquiry into the The effectiveness of Australia’s military justice system agreed.

As a direct result of Senate recommendations, the inquiry into the Black Hawk crash was headed by a civilian judge — the first time that’d happened. And that judge declared the video should be released. It was right and proper that he do so.

Secrecy provides a breeding-ground for corruption.

Secrecy can be used to cover up incompetence.

Secrecy is, of course, essential in many military operations. But when it comes to finding out why a perfectly good helicopter slammed into the deck of a ship and then dragged two fine men to their deaths, secrecy has no place. Justice needs to be done — out of respect to those men, and out of respect to every man and woman who chooses to serve the Australian people in the armed forces.

Justice not only needs to be done, we need to see that it’s being done — and that means putting the evidence on the public record.

I’m sorry you’ve had to re-live the disaster. I know even reading this letter will hurt. I’ll have trouble sleeping tonight too, having re-lived my own story. That’s the price of Justice. It’s worth paying.

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Sydney Opera House hacked, disingenuous

Stilgherrian — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:43:20 +0000

This morning’s Sydney Morning Herald has a story about how the Sydney Opera House website was hacked. It’s a nice explanation for the masses about how these things work.

But I think the SOH’s Claire Swaffield is disingenuous when she says that no customer data was disclosed.

Sure, the SOH customer database wasn’t affected. But if trojans were installed on visitors’ computers, then their data could well have been compromised — and the SOH doesn’t know how long that was happening.

Ms Swaffield’s comment is good for the SOH’s PR spin, maybe, but it isn’t the reality. A far more useful and, dare I say it, responsible statement would have been to say that while the SOH data wasn’t compromised, users should check their computers for infection — particularly if they’re not 100% sure their maintenance is up to date.

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The Marvel of Flight, at $3 a go

Stilgherrian — Fri, 11 May 2007 10:20:49 +0000

Some Australian airlines announced record-low $3 airfares this month. But do you really want to travel on an airline where you contribute so little money to pre-flight checks and other maintenance tasks…?

Writing in Crickey last week, Ben Sandilands knocks the nail on the head:

There are claims that substantial numbers of Australian pilots have accepted — or been forced to accept — ‘fatigue management solutions’ that would be criminal if applied to the long-distance truckies on the nation’s highways.

The public sees cancelled flights, and airlines complain about pilots taking “too many sickies”, but one pilots tells Sandilands:

Too few pilots are declaring themselves fatigued in situations where they should emphatically not be permitted to control an airliner, especially if overtaken by those unexpected things, like mechanical failures, or severe weather, or an emergency landing, where the wrong decision is irretrievably wrong.

It’s not much better on the ground where, as one air traffic controller told Crikey this week, people are falling asleep on the job:

Just last week, I was having a busy session about 3am, and I had a few aircraft to ‘hand-off’ to the next sector. Now it just so happens, the next sector is the guy sitting about 20 feet behind me. On every occasion (about 5-10 minutes apart) the controller was sound asleep — to the point where I had to get up, go over and physically wake him up so that I could transfer the aircraft over to him!

I have nothing against the guy — he has more experience than me, but he has already worked the morning shift, and was now into his 14th hour of duty in less than 24 hours, and was already on his ninth shift in the same number of days. Our ‘Fatigue Management System’ says he was fit to be at work. He and I know better.

Of course management spouts the usual reassuring words, like this statement from Airservices Australia:

Safety is Airservices’ primary consideration in everything that we do in our business…

Uhuh. Of course it is.