Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: government

  • Tracks in the ether

    Tracks in the ether

    Bureaucrats dream of tracking every person or asset under their purview and the rise of technologies like smartphones,  Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Radio Frequency IDentity (RFID) chips are giving them more power than ever.

    Two stories in the last week illustrated how these technologies are being used by authorities to monitor people; a school district in the United States is fighting a student who refuses to wear an RFID enabled identity card and Saudi immigration authorities are now sending text messages to guardians of travellers, mainly women, leaving the country.

    In Saudi Arabia, the law prohibits minors and women from leaving the country without the permission of their adult male guardians. As the Riyadh Bureau website explains, to streamline the permission process Saudi authorities enabled online pre-registration for travellers so now male guardians can grant assent through a website rather than dealing with the immigration department’s paperwork every time their spouse or children wants to travel.

    When the spouse or child passes through immigration, the guardian receives an SMS message saying their ward is about to leave the country. One assumes the male can withdraw that approval on receipt of the text.

    The Saudi application is an interesting use of the web and smartphones to deliver government services and probably not what Western e-gov advocates are thinking of when they agitate for agencies to move more functions online.

    More ominous is the story from the US where Wired Magazine reports Andrea Hernandez, a Texan student, is fighting her local school over the use of RFID enabled identity cards that track pupils’ attendance.

    John Jay High School’s use of RFID tags is a classic case of bureaucrat convenience as electronic cards are far easier to manage and monitor than roll calls or sign-ins.

    Incidentally John Jay High School has over 200 CCTV cameras monitoring students’ movements, as district spokesman Pascual Gonzalez says, “the kids are used to being monitored.”

    The problem is that RFID raises a range of privacy and security issues which the bureaucrats either haven’t thought through or have decided don’t apply to their department.

    Notable among those issues is that “has a bar code associated with a student’s Social Security number”. It never ceases to amaze just how, despite decades of evidence, US agencies and businesses keep using an identifier that has proved totally unsuited for the purposes it was developed for.

    Probably the most worrying point from the Texan story is how school officials tried to suppress the story, offering Ms Hernandez’s father a compromise on the condition he “agree to stop criticizing the program and publicly support it.”

    That urge to control criticism and dissent is probably the thing all of us should worry about when governments and businesses have the ability to track our movements.

    In this respects, the Texas education officials are even more oppressive than Saudi anti-women laws. Something we should consider as more of our behaviour is tracked.

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  • Incurious George and the cult of managerialism

    Incurious George and the cult of managerialism

    “Do you not read papers?” Thundered the BBC’s John Humphrys to the corporation’s Director General during an interview over the broadcaster’s latest scandal.

    That exchange was one of the final straws for the hapless George Entwhistle’s 54 day leadership of the British Broadcasting Corporation where the Jimmy Savile scandal had seen him labelled as ‘Incurious George’ for his failure to ask basic questions of his subordinates.

    Humphry’s emphasised this when discussing the Newsnight program’s advance notice of the allegations they were going make;

    You have a staff, but you have an enormous staff of people who are reporting into you on all sorts of things – they didn’t see this tweet that was going to set the world on fire?

    A lack of staff certainly isn’t the BBC’s problem, the organisation’s chairman Chris Patten quipped after Entwhistle’s resignation that the broadcaster has more managers than the Chinese Communist Party.

    George Entwhistle’s failure to ask his legion of managers and their failure to keep the boss informed is symptomatic of modern management where layers of bureaucracy are used to diffuse responsibility.

    In every corporate scandal over the last two decades we find the people who were paid well to hold ‘responsible’ positions claimed they weren’t told about the nefarious deeds or negligence of their underlings.

    Shareholders suffer massive losses, taxpayers bail out floundering businesses and yet senior executives and board members happily waddle along blissfully content as long as the money keeps rolling in.

    If it were just private enterprise affected by this managerialism then it could be argued that the free market will fix the problem. Unfortunately the public sector is equally affected.

    Managerialism infects the public service as we see with the BBC and it’s political masters  and the results are hospital patients die, wards of the state abused, known swindlers rob old ladies and agencies continually fail to deliver the services they are charged to deliver.

    Again the layers of management diffuse responsibility; the Minister, the Director-General and the ranks of Directors with claims to the executive toilet suite’s keys are insulated from the inconvenience of actually being responsible for doing the job they are paid to do.

    Managerialism and incuriousity are fine bedfellows, in many ways Incurious George Entwhistle is the management icon of our times.

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  • Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter 9: Deeper and broader relationships

    Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter 9: Deeper and broader relationships

    This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report.

    Australia in the Asian Century’s final chapter looks at how Australia can deepen relationships with its Asian neighbours. The chapter is full of fine ideas which don’t quite match the reality of government policies and spending.

    Early in the chapter the white paper proposes increasing the number of Australian diplomats in Asia along with opening a new embassy in Ulan Baator, a Jakarta based ambassador to ASEAN and consulates in Shenyang , Phuket and eastern Indonesia.

    Fine words, however Australia’s diplomatic corps has been shrinking for the last twenty years so staffing these facilities will require a withdrawal from other regions. The white paper doesn’t identify which countries Australia’s representation would be cut from and the consequences of that.

    More importantly, it doesn’t identify how Foreign Affairs and Trade staff will be skilled up to man these facilities, instead we get another worthy ambition.

    National objective 22. Australia will have the necessary capabilities to promote Australian interests and maintain Australia’s influence.

    • Australia’s diplomatic network will have a larger footprint across Asia.

    Again, one would surely expect that Australia would already have the necessary capabilities to promote its national interest and maintain influence. Is the white paper suggesting we don’t?

    Which leads us to the next national objective;

    National objective 23. Australia will have stronger and more comprehensive relationships with countries across the region, especially with key regional nations—China, India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea.

    If we accept the assumption which underlies the entire paper, that Asia is going to continue to grow both economically and in influence then this will happen regardless of what governments do. It’s a meaningless and silly statement which once again ignores most of Asia and simplifies the dynamics.

    The Australia Network

    One of the great wastes of the Howard years was the dismembering of Radio Australia which was a cheap and effective way of projecting ‘soft power’ across the region. I personally came across this as a backpacker in China where many manual workers in the hard seat carriages practiced their Australian accented English that they’d learned on Radio Australia’s programs.

    This was shut down by one of the spiteful, stupid and poorly thought out decisions that were the hallmark of the Howard government.

    Replacing this was a new Australia network that replaced the previous awful overseas television service which had been a niche product on Asian cable TV channels – I had it on my Thai cable subscription when I lived in Bangkok. It was rarely watched.

    The Australia Network hasn’t been a great success and that is largely due to the funding – the 2011-21 contract was costed at $221 million in the budget papers.

    A break out box in the white paper boasts about the Australia Channel and its “mandate to encourage awareness of Australia, promote cross-cultural communication and build regional partnerships.”

    Listed is the funding for some other services – Al Jazeera, $359 million in 2009; CCTV, $280 million in 2009 and NHK World/Radio, $226 million in 2008.

    With the Australia Network receiving less than a tenth of this funding, it’s no surprise the station looks amateurish and irrelevant. Once again we see the difference between government words and government deeds.

    Which brings us to the final two national objectives;

    National objective 24. Australia will have deeper and broader people to people links with Asian nations, across the entire community.

    National objective 25. Australia will have stronger, deeper and broader cultural links with Asian nations.

    Again these are more motherhood statements and barely worth considering. The section itself skates over some of Australia’s most important assets – the cultural diversity and immigrant communities.

    That the final chapter spends just a few pages on this aspect probably sums up the entire project – simple, full of motherhood statements and missing the critical strengths and threats to Australia’s, and Asia’s growth.

    Overall the paper is a disappointment that tells us little we didn’t already know while stating some big ambitions which successive governments have shown they aren’t capable of delivering.

    The message for those building Australia’s 21st Century links with Asia is not to wait for government but to get on and do it.

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  • Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter 8: Building sustainable security in the region

    Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter 8: Building sustainable security in the region

    This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report.

    The eighth chapter of Australia in the Asian Century looks at the security picture of the region, this is one of the bigger chapters and like some of the others it’s as notable for what it leaves out as for what it says.

    National objective 20. Australian policies will contribute to Asia’s development as a region of sustainable security in which habits of cooperation are the norm.

    That’s nice, worthy and has been undoubtedly true for most previous Australian governments. Except of course when Australian Prime Ministers join the prevailing colonial power in wars like Iraq, Afghanistan, Malaya, Korea, Vietnam or kicking around the German territories in World War I.

    Chapter Eight partly dives into territory already covered in Chapter Three, this time though the analysis does discuss the United States’ role in more detail and makes the observation that US military spending dwarfs that of any other Asian nation – interestingly this is one of the few times Russia gets a mention in the entire report.

    Encouragingly, the paper doesn’t confine the concept of ‘security’ just to military matters and takes a broader view of issues such as guaranteeing access to resources, food and water. There is some discussion of climate change and on regional responses to natural disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes.

    One notable omission is that of refugees. Given that most of the asylum seekers arriving by boat are Asian – currently coming from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka – and almost all pass through other Asian countries, it would be expected this issue would get some exploration. Sadly it doesn’t and once again skirting over an important issue detracts from the paper’s substance.

    As befits Australia’s most important relationships in Asia, there is a lot of discussion of the three way relationship between China, the United States and Australia with a detailed breakout box in section 8.4.

    The discussion on Australia’s relations between China and the US makes an interesting statement;

    In managing the intersections of Australia’s ties with the United States and China, we will need a clear sense of our national interests, a strong voice in both relationships and effective diplomacy.

    Undoubtedly this statement is true, however successive Australian governments have conflated the interests of the United States with being the same as Australia’s. In recent times Australian leaders have followed the US lead even when it has been clear American policy conflicts with Australia’s Chinese relations.

    Moving away from a reflex support of the United States is going to be one of the biggest challenges for Australian governments in the Asian Century and one hopes the process is as gradual and incident free as the white paper hopes.

    National objective 21.The region will be more sustainable and human security will be strengthened with the development of resilient markets for basic needs such as energy, food and water.

    National objective 21 is an interesting statement in itself – “resilient markets for basic needs such as energy, food and water” smacks of the 1980s privatisation and corporatism that has left Australia with duopoly industries and an excessive financialisation of those markets for basic needs.

    It may well turn out to be the case that Asian countries choose not to follow that path, particularly those like the Philippines and Indonesia who have experienced the effects of crony capitalism in recent history.

    Chapter 8 of Australia in the Asian Century finishes with a detailed look at the regional efforts aimed at building trust and co-operation on trans-national issues.  Much is made of various international groups such as the G20 and the UN.

    An interesting case study is that of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty with an examination of Japan’s and Australia’s work in that field. Sadly this is another area that’s let down by the actions of current and previous Australian governments in selling uranium to India.

    The nuclear weapons stand off between India, Pakistan and China is another ‘elephant in the room’ issue that doesn’t really get the coverage it should in such a report.

    Chapter 8 of Australia in the Asian Century is a very optimistic section of the report however it does hint at the path Australia could follow to being a credible, medium sized economy and influencer in the region. However one has to consider the actions of Australian leaders when asking if the nation is really interested in taking that path.

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  • Australia in the Asian Century – Building the agriculture industry

    Australia in the Asian Century – Building the agriculture industry

    Before going into Chapter 8, the Australia in the Asian Century report has a detailed look at the agriculture industry. Which kicks off with National Objective number 19;

    National objective 19. Australia’s agriculture and food production system will be globally competitive, with productive and sustainable agriculture and food businesses.

    While this objective seems to have already been achieved, the bulk of the chapter does a good job of identifying the opportunity and challenges for the industry.

    The examination of trade treaties, biosecurity and food security is a good overview of the industry however it does suffer from a rose coloured view of prospects and government programs.

    Issues such as protectionism, genetically modified foods and the running sore of live cattle exports don’t get a mention.

    Another aspect of this section is how the aspirations don’t match the actions of governments, for instance the industry capture of regulators – the case of defining free range eggs being a good example – is a real barrier to Australia selling quality produce internationally.

    While the section does discuss ‘value adding’, the tenor of the section seems to be focused on bulk exports and really doesn’t identify industries such organics and free range which are an opportunity for the agricultural industry.

    Overall though, this section at least does give a reasonably detailed snapshot of an industry and its a shame the paper doesn’t attempt to profile other sectors in the Australian economy.

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