Verity Pravda

Well done on responding to the experience so far. I was greatly afraid that you were going to merely keep plugging away with your predetermined list of postings. However I'm not sure I've seen he evidence of "The overwhelmingly response seems that government blogging is a good thing and a welcome way to engage with the public; that it improves the accountability and transparency of government." Some of your respondants have been quite confused and thought this was the Minister's blog and even that he was reading it. In reality this is just a more immediate way of doing the old-fashioned consultation process - with a number of weaknesses. The main weakness is that respondants aren't required to create a narrative of their responses. While the public servants who normally read responses like it when everyone constrains themselves to just answering the questions in the discussion paper, it is the submissions who engage with the breadth of the material who provide the most value. As I also said on my reply on PSI I'm not convinced that this process alone adds to transparency. fter all three workshops and one forum wre held on the DE and the only public information is the two snippets of Senator Conroy on YouTube. So let's agree that we could say that Government on-line consultation and forums could improve transparency and accountability. Not that it has done so.