Marcus Ganley has a good idea

· by · in Democracy, Lambton Ward, Policy. ·

I see that one of the Lambton Ward candidates is campaigning for more openess and transparency at Wellington City Council and has a poll running on the sorts of things that should be more open such as payments made to councillors and voting records.  Might be worth a look and a vote.  If he doesn’t make it, it would be good for someone to pick up these proposals.

14 responses to “Marcus Ganley has a good idea”

  1. Taupo District Council is already web streaming council meetings, and both Bob Parker and Jim Anderton are pushing for it for Christchurch.

    I like the idea in principal, but I do think at some stage a cost benefit analysis has to come into it.

    At the very least though, Marcus’ idea of a central list of each councillor’s voting record would be nice.

  2. How do you cost/benefit that? CBA are economic tests. Hard to put a price on “openness” vs the cost of doing so.

    • xenoplexy – your comment is hard to fathom. some things are a matter of principle and are fundamental to the functioning of democracy. openness of government is one of those things. the question shouldn’t be whether it is cost-effective to be open, but how government can be open in the most cost-effective way. in other words — what is the cheapest way to provide and effective information link between government and people.

      • I think he was replying to the first comment from WCC Watch – “I do think at some stage a cost benefit analysis has to come into it” – and questioning that (and thus agreeing with you).

  4. Video streaming wouldn’t be so hard or costly. No need for over the top RED cameras etc. (we don’t want to count pimples on Councillors faces here). Or for high production and editing value. In the simplest case fix a camera, push record when it starts, and dump it on YouTube for free playout infrastructure. Not quite live, but not too bad either. Otherwise if liveness is important there are people that would probably happily help with this, may be worth contacting r2.co.nz, CityLink, etc. Whole thing could be happily arranged for less than $10,000 capex I’d suspect. And what, 100 hours yearly support from a staffer, at a glorious $100 burden rate, so let’s assume south of $10,000 annual opex. Too easy.

  5. I’m glad to see you’ve picked up the ideas. The full policy, which provides more of the thinking behind the ideas than the poll questions can, is at: http://marcusganley.org.nz/campaign?quicktabs_1=2

    It is important to recognise that the Council currently does a good job of providing the information – if you’re ready to ask for it or wade through pdf documents. However, open government needs information that is accessible, not just available.

    I accept that there are costs. I do think a commitment to open technologies might go some way to offsetting some of the costs.

    Cheers

    Marcus

    • Brilliant initiative, Marcus. All inspired, no doubt, by that model of openness, accountability and transparency – the NZ Labour Party?

      • Cheers Digby – Appreciate your comments. Definitely – you’re right a lot of the ideas draw on
        the work of the Open Labour project
        (http://open.labour.org.nz/) and I have participated in that process. I have also had the opportunity to
        discuss the ideas with Tom Glaisyer (Knight Media Policy Fellow at the
        New America Foundation http://newamerica.net/user/254) who has put me
        in touch with people working on similar projects and highlighted
        examples such as that of Pepper Pike City in Ohio (a tiny city but it
        shows what committed Councillors can do to promote openness –
        http://mediapolicy.newamerica.net/blogposts/2010/modeling_transparency_in_pepper_pike_city-28001).

        Last year I also had the opportunity to meet Professor Eben Moglen the
        Chairperson of the Software Freedom Law Center and professor of law
        and legal history at Columbia University who was a real inspiration.

  6. It shouldn’t be very hard to do any of the three things Marcus outlines (vote recording in a meaningful way being the hardest).

    The rem issue is a common one, and should be kept up to date on the Mayor and Councillors page:

    http://www.wellington.govt.nz/about/mayor/index.html

    It should categorise the payment they recieve because being a commissioner on lots of consent hearings can be lucrative, but I think it’s a different type of payment than that of a director – and I think we’d like to know the difference.

    Attendance too is a no-brainer, and should be accessible in the same way.

    Voting records are harder because it can be a qualitative judgement in terms of issue grouping – and is often better done by external groups. But certainly there isn’t any reason why the WCC or other councils can’t make a crude stab at up to date information being readily accessible.

    It’s our democracy after all.

  7. What I like about this idea is that it should be reasonably cheap and would really help people make informed decisions about incumbent councillors. All the information is already there on the WCC website it’s just managed and presented so so poorly.

  8. Web casting would be excellent for the Wellington Regional Council – if only to “out” those councillors who fall asleep during meetings!

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