The Parliament remains a central focus of democracy in Victoria. This is for two reasons: First, it serves as the primary law-making body, charged with ultimate responsibility for the development, debate and enactment of legislation. Second, the physical building of the Parliament represents a focus for the relationship between the legislators and their constituency.
As a Committee of the Parliament, the SARC considered that any report into the future of electronic democracy in Victoria must make explicit reference to the future role of Parliament and the way in which Parliament and its Members make effective use of ICTs in the service of democracy.
The University of Melbourne's Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies argued the need for a strong emphasis on the role of Parliament in the development of electronic democracy. On behalf of that Centre, Dr S. Evans and Ms A. Hood stated - in response to the proposition that a pluralisation of democratic institutions and point of oversight has occurred over the years - that:
Thus, the Centre observed that:
The discussion in this section, therefore, complements and reinforces the discussion of Parts I through III, and the Committee is of the opinion that the Parliament of Victoria must:
Consider access to the information it places online as a fundamental requirement of good governance
Focus attention on ways in which the Parliament can both extend the reach of the content it produces, and produce greater and richer levels of content for the citizens of Victoria
Invest in mechanisms to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of its processes, both in the two Chambers and through its Committee system
Consider how it can use ICTs in consultation and participation practices undertaken by the Parliament
Resource and support the work of MPs through the effective use of new technologies.
This part of the Report, therefore, examines each of these five issues. The Committee wishes to note that none of the discussion contained in this part of the report violates any of the recommendations or considerations given to the effective implementation of ICTs in the VPS. With regard to the development of electronic democracy, it is the view of the Committee that the Parliament of Victoria must strive, through individual innovation and in partnership with the wider public and community sectors of Victoria, to be seen as a lead agency in the development of new initiatives and better processes for engaging the community of Victoria through the use of technology.
While the Parliament as a building has always been open to
the people of Victoria, the Committee recognises the specific characteristics
of ICTs which will allow this institution, and its Members, greater means to
involve and inform the people of Victoria.
The standard set by Parliament will serve to represent the benchmark for Victoria.
The Parliament of Victoria, as a deliberative law maker and house of oversight and review, produces large amounts of publicly available information of direct relevance to (a) the democratic process and (b) the awareness of issues of public interest by the community.
The Committee notes three specific areas of particular importance:
The proceedings of Parliament - Hansard - which contains the debate of Members and consideration of issues of public policy through legislative and oversight activities
The reports and associated publications of the Committees of the Parliament charged with the oversight and investigation of the effectiveness of legislation, the activities of the Government of the day and matters of public concern. These documents include an array of policy-related information, and are often associated with considerable supporting material in the form of minutes of evidence, public documents and submissions, and references to other sources of information
Documents published by the Parliament to support the public's use and understanding of Parliament. These include information and fact sheets about Parliament and its operations, guides to assist in participation in hearings and inquiry processes, and a range of other documents of educational value.
Over the past decade, the Parliament of Victoria has progressively placed this material online, and the Committee notes that the growth of information published does reflect, on a smaller scale, a similar ad hoc publishing process as that identified by the OCIO with respect to the VPS.
This is largely due to the somewhat autonomous nature of parts of the Parliament (particularly the Committees) which publish their own material according to the needs of these Parliamentary processes. Thus, the website of the Parliament, while generally attractive and containing a depth of content, has a range of different sub-elements, with sometimes idiosyncratic design elements (areas of HTML, areas of PDF-only content, use of dynamic menu system, fixed links and deep linking, use of a range of styles, framed and unframed elements of the site, etc.).
Thus, the first consideration of the Committee is what aspects of "best practice" the Parliament should consider with regard to its use of ICTs purely as a communications tool.
Without reiterating the points covered in Part II of the report, the Committee notes that the observations made with regard to Government information online are equally applicable to the Parliamentary web presence, particularly relating to:
The accessibility of online content to all members of the community
Extending the reach of Parliamentary information through syndication.
During the course of the Inquiry, the Committee received evidence from Dr S. O'Kane, Secretary of the Department of Parliamentary Services. Dr O'Kane noted that:
The current assessment of the Department was that the Parliament maintained a level-A compliance with the WCAG
The Parliament planned to upgrade its website to AAA compliance in the 2005-06 financial year. (Department of Parliamentary Services, Correspondence, 25/02/05)
In addition, Dr O'Kane noted that the current capacity of the Parliament to maintain its level-A rating is limited by the distributed nature of publishing through the Parliamentary website, with some authors (such as Committees) sometimes violating the WCAG guidelines. Because of this, there are some difficulties for the Parliament to maintain level-A compliance rating.
The Committee commends the Department for its attention to this matter and supports the upgrading of the website to the highest level of WCAG compliance. The Parliament, through the work of the Department in setting a high standard for the website design, is demonstrating a clear leadership position for the VPS.
The Committee is of the view that, in making this transition, the Department should consider the issues of content syndication and the portability of ICTs, and also how the issue of distributed publishing might be managed to ensure that the Parliamentary website can be sustained to WCAG AAA compliance through appropriate acquisition of a CMS.
The work of Parliamentary Committees will be well served through syndication of content online, allowing the various activities of the Victorian Parliamentary committee system to be supported by an array of customisable news feeds. As most committees undertake a number of functions simultaneously, serving a range of stakeholders and policy issues, the Committee observes that the range of content feeds is potentially very large and will need appropriate management by the Parliament.
In addition, the Committee notes that the Legislature of Texas in the United States of America has established a specific information service for Members and the public who use PDAs. This information service serves as an updateable and customisable news feed provided through the AvantGo information service, and provides the user with information about Members, committee work and meetings schedules.
The advantage of this approach for some users is that the system provides an update of information stored on the user's PDA when the device is synchronised with their desktop computer, and therefore does not require the user to have a continuous Internet connection (such as Wi-Fi). In meetings with Mr B. Wyatt, the Public Affairs Manager for the United States' National Conference of State Legislatures, the advantages of this approach were seen as:
Providing portable information for regular visitors to the legislature
Providing a portable resource for staff and members.
The Committee considers this approach as one that should be considered in the development of the new website of the Parliament, as a possible adjunct to web-based syndication approaches (the systems would likely share similar data).
The Committee wishes to make special note of the need to effectively develop and maintain a consistent user interface across the Parliament and its Committees, in order to assist users with low information literacies. The Committee is of the opinion that the Parliament should establish its own stylistic templates to establish a consistent user experience (across a range of device types).
The Committee notes that the Parliament, as a distinct entity from the VPS, should provide a consistent user experience that:
Provides the advantages of navigability through similarities with the approach of the website templates of the VPS
But which maintains a unique appearance appropriate for the separate institution of Parliament.
A redevelopment of the website of the Parliament of Victoria should be undertaken with consideration of the means to ensure:
The capacity of publishers in the Parliament to provide content that can be syndicated
The use of appropriate authoring and content presentation tools to allow the Parliamentary website to be accessible on devices with unusual screen sizes
The use of a consistent user-experience model for website design
The capacity of the Parliament, as a distributed publishing environment, to sustain Web Content Accessibility Guidelines level AAA compliance.
Given the requirement for the VPS and the Local Government sector to report on performance in this area on a regular basis, the Committee also notes that the performance of the Parliamentary website should be regularly monitored and reported upon. It is the opinion of the Committee that pursuing the aggressive approach to accessibility indicated by Dr O'Kane should be matched with a regular reporting process.
The Committee feels that a strong leadership position on this issue is important for the Parliament of Victoria, reflecting its place in the community and as a reference point for performance by Victorian departments and agencies.
The Department of Parliamentary Services should provide to the Presiding Officers, for tabling in the Parliament, an annual certification of compliance by the Parliamentary website with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
This document should note, where appropriate, areas of, and for, improvement and actions to be taken to improve and sustain compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
In making these recommendations, the Committee notes the difficulties in meeting WCAG compliance that are related to real-time captioning of audio and video transmissions (see Webcasting, Live Captioning and Accessibility).
The Committee also gave consideration to the continuous improvement and expansion of the information presented by the Parliament and its Committees online. In making these comments, however, the Committee notes that it did not receive any general or specific submissions that highlighted a lack of content on the Parliamentary website.
Of particular interest to the Committee was the provision of material associated with the participatory consultative processes of the Committees of the Parliament. In this area the Committee noted that the SARC of the 54th Parliament recommended in its 2002 Report Improving Victoria's Parliamentary Committee System that:
The current performance in this area is good, but mixed. Most Parliamentary committees place background material and hearing transcripts online, and a reasonable number make submissions available or provide a list of submissions online. Given the stated need for consultation and participation processes to be supported with as much available online content as possible (see The Role of ICTs in Consultation and Participation in Victoria, in Part III), it is the Committee's view that this necessitates the publication of public submissions online, with the exception of confidential submissions.
The Committee notes that the upgrade of the Parliamentary website will necessitate the acquisition of a CMS system which will support committee staff in meeting this requirement. However, the Committee observed that:
Submissions are often made in a range of formats (in print, electronic, different file types)
Some submissions will not be received in an accessible format
There is a tendency for submissions received electronically to be provided in PDF format, and paper submissions to be scanned as PDFs, often only as image files
It is unreasonable, in most instances, to require the public to provide submissions that meet WCAG guidelines.
It has been the traditional approach of the Parliament to supply requested information in printed format. During the electronic democracy Inquiry, discussions were held with some members of the public about the conversion of documents from PDF to RTF in order to meet accessibility requirements, and considerations given to conversion of paper documents to screen-readable text on request. However, the Committee notes that the conversion of large amounts of documents into electronic formats may be difficult and time consuming.
One approach taken to mitigate against this problem is that taken by the Outer Suburban/Interface Services and Development Committee. This committee makes it a policy to request that submissions, where possible, are provided with an electronic version to assist in online publication, and this approach should be followed by other committees to assist in providing accessible copies of submissions online.
The Committee commends this approach to the Parliament as a procedure that should be adopted generally.
The Committee notes the considerable effort of Hansard in making the proceedings of Parliament available online; not simply through the conversion of printed material into electronic documents, but also through the establishment of searchable archives. The Victorian Parliamentary Hansard service has been one of the early innovators in placing the proceedings of Parliament online in a textual form, and the Committee thanks the service for its performance in recent years.
The Committee notes that the adoption of Recommendation 72, particularly in the area of syndication of content, would be valuable in further developing the excellent service already offered by Hansard. The development of a CMS, which stores Hansard in a format like Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML), will be an essential underpinning technology to provide for:
Customised syndicated feeds from Hansard, based on user searches (see the discussion of this approach in Extending Accessibility and Reach of Government Content, in Part II)
The integration of Hansard material in webcast archives, if adopted - see below.
Following the specific requirement for the Inquiry to consider the potential for the "netcasting" (referred to herein as "webcasting", or "streaming") of Parliamentary proceedings over the Internet, the Committee has given consideration to the advantages and costs of adopting this technology to expand access to Parliamentary proceedings online.
Webcasting is a process of narrowcasting audio or video material over the Internet in a steady, continuous stream that allows the end user to access the material as it downloads. Depending on the technology used, this may be a system whereby the user's browser or media program stores material until enough of the download has arrived to allow the rest of the file to be played continuously ("buffering" at the client end), or it may be based on a system whereby the stream is customised to match the access speeds of the client and overall demand ("load balancing" at the server end).
The use of webcasting is increasingly common around the world, driven by improvements in the quality, speed and reliability of the Internet to distribute content. In addition, the development of 3G telephony services provides for the ability for mobile telephone users to access live video and to serve as a source of streaming video. As this technology is distributed through our society, the integration of portable devices and the WWW will see a proliferation in the creation and distribution of video and audio content, with new applications for the technology being developed every day.
As increasing numbers of people become accustomed to having the ability to distribute and receive multimedia content in a pervasive computing environment, the applications for these technologies have expanded. While video distribution on the WWW started with the uploading and downloading of small files ( "clips" ) of video material, the multimedia capacities of Internet browsers have encouraged software and hardware developers to provide means to embed live streams in websites, and to make the capture of audio and video material in digital form easier.
The latest generation of consumer video cameras, for example, focus on the capacity of members of the public to take their video content and then edit and redistribute it, while the popularity of digital portable music players has motivated renewed interest in the integration of online content with these devices (such as the legitimation of music download services, or the development of "podcasting" - the periodic delivery of radio feeds to portable music players).
The advantages of webcasting are in the capacity to deliver large amounts of multimedia content over the Internet, with limited delay, and to provide ongoing live feeds of material without having to break the stream into a set of individual files. This technology is used across the Internet, and popular examples include:
The redistribution of live content online, such as radio programs or television shows (e.g. an Internet radio station, such as Sub FM) to reach a broader audience
The delivery of stored content online, such as individual television programs, pop music clips, movies or trailers (e.g. see the ABC's broadband content collection) to service the demand for content-on-demand services.
In the political context, political parties and civil society organisations have employed this technology to distribute multimedia content. This has been evidenced in particular in the provision of political advertising online during recent election campaigns. During the 2005 Federal election, all of the major political parties (the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal Party of Australia, The Nationals, the Greens and the Australian Democrats) provided at least one piece of audio and/or video material online (Chen, 2004a).
With specific reference to the role this technology may play in the Parliamentary context in Victoria, streaming media could be used to allow:
Complete, real-time narrowcasting of all Parliamentary work, including the public meetings of Parliamentary committees in audio and video formats
Partial or edited narrowcasting of parts of Parliamentary proceedings
The provision of audio and video material for retransmission (e.g. rebroadcasting)
Archiving and indexing of broadcast or narrowcast material.
This capacity has been recognised around the world, both in the Parliamentary context and in other governance environments, such as for the public meetings of corporations or in the Local Government sector. In this sector, Victoria has taken an active approach to providing access to its deliberative meetings via this method. As Mr A. Davis of the VLGA observed:
Currently, a significant number of parliaments are webcasting, or developing the capacity to do so. Australian examples include:
International examples include:
Austria, including the State of Vorarlberg
Canada, including the provinces of British Columbia, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Saskatchewan
Denmark, including the Faroe Islands
Northern Ireland (currently suspended)
The rationale behind the introduction of this technology within Parliament tends to focus on expanding public access to the operations of the Parliament, not simply through the formal record, but being able to sit in the public gallery "remotely". This has advantages for people who:
Have limited time and/or have an interest in only a small part of the business of the day
Live at a distance to the Parliament
Have responsibilities that prevent travel (parents, carers)
Have a disability.
In addition, it is argued that understanding the work of Parliament through observing its form, procedures, language and ritual is important in understanding the way parliament works as an institution based on tradition and as a fixed set of procedural rules. This view of the work of Parliament, it is argued, is distinctly different to accessing the written record of its proceedings through Hansard.
On this issue the House of Lords (2004:49) in the United Kingdom has made the comment that, while the Internet has expanded the availability of information online, parliaments must also be cognisant of the form and format of this provision. In this context, the provision of material that engages the public. Webcasting thus has a benefit in its ease of consumption and multimedia component.
At a different level, experience with the introduction of webcasting in Queensland and Canada has shown that the introduction of the service is useful for public servants, MPs and their staff to monitor the debate or progression of business in the Chamber. For Members whose electorates are some distance from Melbourne, webcasting may be a useful service by which to retain a connection between the MP's activities in the Parliament and their staff in the electorate office.
However, while webcasting provides these advantages to the public and to the Parliament, it should be noted that:
The introduction of webcasting of Parliaments is generally an expensive undertaking. Hansard, in its report of 22 July 2004, notes service estimates ranging from $150,000 to $1.5 million per Chamber
The information provided is available in another form, Hansard, which in the Victorian context is online, can be searched and is archived. Thus, the introduction of webcasting provides a different experience of Parliamentary proceedings
In the course of informal discussions with Professor Coleman in Melbourne during 2004, Professor Coleman told the Committee that, from his experience in the United Kingdom:
The majority of Parliamentary business tends to be relatively routine, and is not engaging to the general public
Demand for this service outside of the social and professional circles of Members is low
The relative cost outweighs the benefits, when compared with other electronic democracy activities that could be invested in, such as online consultation.
The Committee notes these concerns, and observes that the Victorian Treasury has already rejected a proposal of the Parliament for a funding allocation for webcasting. Clearly, webcasting of Parliamentary proceedings has a place in the array of engagement techniques that a modern legislature should engage in, but not at the expense of new approaches that provide information that is not currently available to the community.
On the other hand, the Committee does note two important drivers for the provision of webcasting services.
First - against the background of vertical and horizontal integration of commercial and public news media - it may be the regional and State-based parliaments of the world that have most to gain from the adoption of webcasting.
In evidence taken during the visit to the United States, the National Conference of State Legislatures told the Committee that some legislatures had decided to provide multimedia content online in order to overcome a lack of coverage of their activities. This took two forms:
The provision of material that could be used by local media to more effectively cover the work of the legislature, such as Internet-accessible, print-ready (high resolution) photographs and video feeds (Alaska)
As a means to bypass under-performing local media through the provision of this direct connection between the legislature and the public.
Second, in addition to the use of webcasting as a tool for information distribution and public education, the Committee notes that these approaches can be used to foster community participation. Thus, while the general availability of webcasts from the two Chambers is of public benefit, the Committee regards the work of Inquiries as an area in which particular public benefit may be achieved.
Given that public hearings are often held during conventional business hours, the ability to access this material remotely can be catalytic of greater levels of public participation. Inquiry discussion list member Mr T. Leeuwenburg stated that:
What this does necessitate, however, is the requirement for
this material to be provided live and as an archive (see below).
On a more direct level, the Committee also notes that in Victoria (Wellington
Shire) and Europe (Municipality
of Issy-Les-Moulineaux), the introduction of webcasting has permitted members
of the public to submit questions to the meeting, as an online adjunct to their
conventional meeting processes (McGrath, 2002).
As indicated above, the Committee has identified that preparatory work for the introduction of webcasting has been undertaken by the Parliament. This work has resulted in the development of an initial project identification document by the Manager of Hansard, Mr C. Gentner. The Committee commends the work of Mr Gentner and acknowledges that the Parliament, through the Presiding Officers, has identified a clear preference to proceed with this approach.
In hearings before the Committee, the President of the Legislative Council, Ms M. Gould MLC, stated that, as a matter of general principle:
But Ms Gould went on to state that:
And thus the preferred approach of the Parliament would be to:
The Committee agrees that, given the possible expenses required, a "staged" or phased process of implementation and experimentation is needed. In examining the work of Hansard to date, the Committee notes that this phased implementation is currently being considered across a number of dimensions:
How to implement the system in stages, such as the selection of an appropriate Chamber in which to begin the initial work
What level of transmission quality should be captured
What level of transmission quality archived material should be stored in
What additional documentation should be provided through the service (such as Chamber documents)
Whether the material should be provided as an online archive
Integration with other systems
Rebroadcasting capacity of the system.
While the Committee is generally supportive of the approach taken to date, it does have a number of difficulties with the discussion of this proposed project in Parliament to date. The Committee has identified four areas of departure.
First, the Committee is uncomfortable with the use of the term "customer" in preference to "citizen" in the discussion of the appropriate design for the service in the existing project identification document. The Committee considers that this term is problematic in that it conflates viewers internal to the Parliament or VPS (one specific target consumption base) with the general citizenry (another target audience).
The focus of the project should be, in the estimation of the Committee, the public of Victoria primarily, followed by an internal audience and re-broadcasters. If the project identification process fails to identify an audience base beyond internal customers, it will be difficult to justify the expense of investment in this area to Treasury, or to the wider Victorian community.
Second, while the project rightly identifies a range of standards issues up to and including high definition television (HDTV), the Committee is of the opinion that the maximum distribution quality provided in the initial phase of the project should be the provision of standard definition television (SDTV). The provision of webcasting across the world tends to focus on far lower levels of resolution, and the capture of SDTV quality feeds would only be necessary for the re-broadcasting over conventional television networks (free-to-air or subscription services).
While the Committee considers this possibility as worthy of further investigation (see below), the low take up of HDTV televisions in Australia (Gallacher and Skinner, 1999; IDC Australia, 2005) combined with the high costs associated with producing HDTV content at this time make this an unwarranted area for investigation. The Committee notes that the provision of this material in HDTV format may drive re-broadcasters' interest in the service, as a low-cost means of meeting Federal Government regulatory requirements for minium provision of material at this resolution, but that this is a poor motivation for investment in such expensive hardware. Thus, rather than an investment in HDTV, the Committee considered the provision of digital content for multichannelling to be the best option for re-broadcasting of the Victorian Parliament.
Third, based on an assessment of the practical use of Parliamentary webcasting in other jurisdictions, the Committee does not regard the issue of archiving of content as a secondary aspect to the service. This view is based on the opinion of the Committee that the advantages of webcasting are both its provision of remote access and its capacity for users to access the record at times suitable to them. This issue is discussed in detail below.
Fourth, there is an over-emphasis in parts of the current work on ensuring that MPs are perceived in the "best light". While the Committee recognises that the current configuration of the physical building will require some considerable work to ensure that lighting issues are resolved for an effective broadcast, project work in this area should set a minimum standard so that the audio and video presentation is clearly perceivable to the end-user only. Excessive attention to the vanity of MPs should not be an overriding concern of the project team, nor should it serve as the basis of excessive project costing.
The Committee considers that informing Members of what can be expected from webcasting in terms of quality is a better approach than altering the scope of the project unnecessarily in this area. The Committee is of the view that MPs should be responsible for their own appearance and deportment, just as there is no expectation by Members that Parliamentary staff will modify the public galleries to ensure they are viewed from the best angle. The experience of the Committee in viewing the range of examples internationally is that the webcast versions tend to focus on sound quality, with the smaller size of video images making minor matters of lighting often moot points.
The Committee recommends the adoption of webcasting for the Parliament of Victoria. It is the view of the Committee, however, that the effective use of this service by members of the public can only be reasonably guaranteed by:
The introduction of a service that allows the users to select a transmission quality and format suitable to them
The introduction of a service that is automatically stored online as an archive, with the archived material accessible through an integrated, text-based search of the written proceedings of Parliament (Hansard Online).
The Committee notes that, while administrative procedures for webcasting are already in place to some degree, the adoption of Recommendation 74 would require minor amendment to the broadcasting provisions of the Standing Orders (chapter 27 for the Legislative Assembly and 3.10 and R6 for the Legislative Council).
The Parliament of Victoria should systematically introduce webcasting of both Chambers of Parliament. The webcasting of public meetings of Parliamentary Committees should be available at the discretion of each committee's chairperson. This system should allow:
Viewers and listeners to select a level of transmission quality suitable to their Internet service
Archiving of two Parliamentary terms of webcasts for online retrieval
Indexing of the webcast through the Hansard database.
In making this recommendation, the Committee is aware that it has recommended an initial introduction that has a higher performance criterion than would be anticipated in the current project identification work undertaken by Hansard. The Committee is of the view that this approach is necessary, if the emphasis of this activity is to be on the impact on members of the public, rather than questions of technological firsts or costs.
The question of transmission quality is one recognised across the world, and is generally determined by consideration of two factors:
The access speeds of users
The cost of bandwidth and hardware for the provider.
The Parliament of Queensland, for example, has recognised that its large bandwidth requirements creates access problems for many of its citizens, and has elected to provide only a version of proceedings that provides audio of the Parliament, with a small image (static) and details of the MP's name, party and electorate.
Whereas some parliaments provide options in this area (such as audio-only streams as well as video streams), appropriate design of the streaming system allows the video material to be stored and reprocessed for different user demands "on the fly". The advantage of this approach lies in the customisation of the service by the end user (not the provider), which meets their preference, and the capacity to provide a minimum level of service for those Victorians who have poor Internet connections for a variety of reasons (including older technology) and those who have high-speed connections and modern technology. This approach, serving the spectrum of demand, would appear to be the most appropriate approach to providing content that is engaging to the end user.
On the second point, that of archiving, the Committee notes considerable issues here, particularly with regard to:
The costs of storing large amounts of video and audio material (which would require large storage capacity)
The need to establish effective mechanisms for searching this material and retrieving it.
While the archiving of Parliamentary webcasts does not appear to be controversial in any way, the Committee observes that the long-term storage and provision of video and audio records of the proceedings of parliaments around the world are seldom undertaken, and that this decision is normally driven by issues of cost.
The question of storage and archiving was discussed during the Committee's overseas mission to Canada, where Members of the Committee met with representatives of the National Parliament's Multimedia Services & ISD Business Planning Division. The National Parliamentary webcasting system, ParlVU system, is currently in the process of being integrated with the Canadian national parliamentary database to allow users to view material archived for two parliamentary terms.
This process required not only the expansion of storage capacity for archived material, but also a systematic process of integrating the video material into the CMS of the Parliament. This integration represented the most technically difficult part of the process, but affords the public the means to quickly and effectively locate stored content through keyword searches, or searching by speaking Member or item.
The Committee notes the example of archiving provided by the Welsh Assembly, which has an archive for both the National Assembly and its committees. The archive allows the user to select their preferred access format and search the archive, and provides a small amount of information associated with the broadcast (Assembly or Committee). In addition, webcasts of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster are now archived online fourteen days after the original transmission, with audio-only provision of Committee work as a "next day" service (Parry, 2004:2).
Archiving has been identified as a critical factor in the success of webcasting. It allows members of the public to use existing search facilities provided by the parliament to locate multimedia content, and acknowledges that most citizens are unlikely to listen to the proceedings live. However, most citizens do:
Locate the material through referral from another source (such as a link from a news story)
Search out material in response to awareness of an issue debated in Parliament, or as part of a general search
View the material as syndicated content through another website.
Given the somewhat unpredictable progression of Parliamentary business, the advantages offered by webcasting would be undermined if the content were not archived for some period of time. The Committee notes that the Parliament of Canada has elected to store its webcasts online for a period of two parliamentary terms, a period of time that appears reasonable in the first instance.
The Committee notes that the issue of webcasting will also force a consideration of the capacity to store older material into the longer term. As the volume of material captured will accrete over time, some process of managing older material with lower levels of ongoing interest will be required. The Canadian parliamentary staff provided the Committee with the view that, given the amount of video material that would be collected, a policy of moving older material into long-term storage would be required.
While the SLV has been identified as one place in which the material may be stored, the Committee notes from the submission of the PROV (Submission No. a28, p. 5), that the public archives have developed expertise in the storage and indexing of video material through work undertaken to store records from surveillance cameras and other CCTV systems.
The Committee feels this approach would be appropriate, as PROV has already given consideration to effective compression formats for long-term storage and future access, as well as the most effective formats for the creation - if required - of portable copies (such as DVD).
Archived streaming video older than two Parliamentary terms should be archived with the Public Records Office Victoria, in consultation with relevant preservation specialists.
It is the view of the Committee that this process will include discussions with the SLV - as the local representatives of the Pandora Archive - but will also include other relevant bodies, such as the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
It should be noted that the Committee, in making Recommendation 74, recognises that the adoption of webcasting presents difficulties with the stated intention of Dr O'Kane in meeting WCAG AAA accessibility targets for the Parliamentary web service.
This issue here is in the requirement for level-A compliance for multimedia material to include synchronised textual elements. That is, a matching textual version of the spoken text (or description) that is set to the timing of the original material.
For archived material, this capability can be achieved through the reintegration of transcriptions with the original record, and the Committee notes that systems can be developed that would allow the synchronisation (through time and date stamping) of archived video material and Hansard. This would allow Hansard to be overlayed back into the archived video stream at a later date. This represents an expense required for providers of multimedia content to meet the requirements of the WCAG.
However, the current WCAG (version 1.0) also requires material broadcast live be captioned. This requires the simultaneous transcription of spoken material to be inserted into the stream. The Committee notes that under the proposed version 2.0, this requirement is removed from the level-A target, and is placed back at the AA level - a reflection of the difficulty in meeting this particular level of compliance for any organisation, regardless of its level of resources. The Committee notes, however, that the capacity to meet Dr O'Kane's intended performance level and the introduction of webcasting are incompatible.
It is the opinion of the Committee that there is a clear case for an exemption from the current (and future) requirements in the area of webcasting for the Parliament. As Hansard is already provided, generally within twenty-four hours of the utterance, the addition of a second set of simultaneous transcribers would represent an excessive expense, given the near duplication of service to the community. While the Committee recognises the intention of the W3C in the original formulation of this part of the WCAG, the public benefit of compliance is not justified in this area.
However, with regard to the post hoc captioning of webcast archives, the Committee recognises that this is more readily achieved, but notes that this form of technology would require significant investment in integrating the information systems of Hansard with the webcasting system. The Committee considers, however, that the appropriate approach to this issue would be to note the possible future extension of the webcasting capacity in this way, and to develop systems that have the capacity for this functionality to be added retrospectively (e.g. ensuring very accurate time and date stamping of archived video material, introducing automatic digital time and date stamping in Hansard systems).
In addition to general support for the introduction of webcasting in Victoria, a number of submissions to the Inquiry (BCA, Submission No. a20; G. Lloyd-Smith, Submission No. a6, p. 1) suggested that the Parliament should also provide terrestrial broadcasting of the Parliament.
The Committee observes that municipalities in the United States, such as Seattle, maintain cable television channels to increase exposure to the community of the work of local administrations based on their regulatory powers over cable television providers.
In the work currently undertaken by the Parliament to date, the Parliament has noted the possibility of re-broadcasting material, either through radio services (such as Radio for the Print Handicapped), free-to-air (such as multichannelling), or the provision of this feed to subscription television providers.
The Committee considers this approach as appropriate, and that the development of the technical design of a webcasting system for the Victorian Parliament should be undertaken in consideration to the possibility for re-broadcasting. The Committee considers the appropriate approach at this time would be for the Parliament of Victoria, through the Presiding Officers, to enter into discussions with relevant broadcasters to determine whether there is interest in taking on such a service, prior to the development of the costed technical proposal.
Even if there is no present interest in re-broadcasting by the commercial, public and/or community broadcasting sectors, the potential to introduce this capacity as a subsequent implementation phase should be planned for in the initial technology acquisition process. Maintaining the capacity to capture parliament in SDTV quality would be a logical "future proof" approach.
The Parliament of Victoria, through the Presiding Officers, should enter discussions with relevant broadcasters to determine the possibility of broadcasting Parliament through their existing networks.
In making a positive recommendation for the adoption of webcasting, the Committee gave careful consideration to the issue of Parliamentary Privilege and the broad- and narrowcasting of the proceedings. Privilege is addressed in the Victoria Constitution Act 1975, which states (s19):
While this section goes on to focus on "printed matter":
The Constitution Act 1975 clearly grants Parliament to legislate to adjust the scope of privilege:
In addition, the Wrongs Act 1958 also makes explicit reference to the publication of the proceedings of Parliament, to ensure that reports of debate are protected from charges of defamation. This Act extends protection to the Parliament's sister institutions around Australia, to provide protection for those legislatures from action taken under Victorian law (s3A):
While this would appear to ensure Parliamentary Privilege is afforded to the broad- and narrowcasting of the material sourced from the Parliament, there are some concerns that the selective distribution of the proceedings of Parliament are not privileged. For example, Campbell (2003) argues that:
In addition, in the context of New South Wales, Griffith (1996:32) has expressed concerns about the distribution of online content with respect to the status of Hansard as the official record of parliamentary proceedings. Overall, while it would appear logical that a video or audio recording of Parliament would appear "definitive", the Committee recognises that Hansard should remain the journal of record for Parliamentary debates, and that due caution should be exercised to protect MPs from defamation while facilitating the widest possible distribution of the proceedings of Parliament.
In addition, the Committee notes that the implication of the decision of the High Court of Australia in Dow Jones & Company Inc. v Gutnick (2002) has presented parliaments with new uncertainty about the status of records of parliamentary proceedings that are transported across jurisdictional boundaries. As the act of "publication" under this decision is determined by the action of the end user ("pull"), the Parliament of Victoria has limited capacity to control the jurisdiction of publication (or multiple publications of proceedings).
Thus, the Committee recognises a situation in which matters relating to an individual or company that has residency or significant financial interest in another State of the Commonwealth are discussed in the Victorian Parliament in the public interest, but ambiguity regarding the reciprocal nature of Privilege and new media technology gives rise to litigation. This may give rise to a charge of defamation outside of Victoria, resulting from webcast material or Hansard online.
In informal discussions of the Committee with Mr N. Laurie, Clerk of the Queensland Parliament, Mr Laurie expressed the opinion that:
The defence of Privilege is unlikely to be rejected by an Australian court with relation to the publication or narrowcasting of parliamentary proceedings online
The issue of Privilege is subject to ongoing legal redefinition, particularly around the area of new publishing and distribution technology, or approaches to information management (e.g. if a press release which reiterated an announcement of Government policy constitutes Privileged speech)
That the High Court determination in the Dow Jones case introduced a new degree of uncertainty as to the application of laws in other jurisdictions of the Commonwealth of Australia.
However, while noting these difficulties, the Committee highlights that this has not prevented the Parliaments of Queensland or the Federal Government from continuing to provide their webcasting services, or for the Commonwealth, to provide its broadcast through the Parliamentary News Network of the ABC.
The Committee notes, however, that this issue reiterates problems identified with the evidentiary powers of Parliamentary Committees; concerns which have been previously identified by the Economic Development Committee of the 52nd Parliament, which noted difficulties in collecting evidence, particularly under summons, extraterritorially. At this time, the Economic Development Committee recommended (1993, s2.1) that:
The Committee considers that this represents a more general concern about issues of Privilege beyond the strict application of ICTs covered by this report. The Committee finds, however, that following the adoption of the new national defamation laws, this matter will be resolved. Section 31 of the model law states:
And the law makes explicit the extension of this privilege between jurisdictions (s31):
Clearly, the desire of the Parliament to make its proceedings available to the citizens of Victoria should not be prevented through this ambiguity. However, the Committee finds that there is insufficient risk to prevent the adoption of webcasting. While the risk of litigation is real, particularly where a MP selectively syndicates content, the new draft defamation laws will resolve the uncertainty within Australia to a large degree.
In expressing satisfaction with this approach, the Committee does recognise that selective re-distribution of recordings of the proceedings of Parliament could be used with malice by a MP or person, allowing the unlimited repetition of a defamatory claim made in Parliament in such a manner as to undermine the established legal protection to Members afforded by principle of Parliamentary Privilege.
The Committee sought to distinguish between, for example, the case in which a MP regularly, automatically syndicated their speeches (in any format) in Parliament via a personal website to improve public awareness of their work in the legislature, and a MP who simply selected a specific allegation or allegations made under privilege for syndication out of malice towards a third party (as a quote or clip). It is clear that the former should attract the protection of qualified privilege, while the latter should be open to a charge of defamation.
The Committee is not of the view that adjusting the laws to protect Parliamentarians who wish to use ICTs should be interpreted as a means of extending their protections to areas of selective re-publication with malice of intent.
It is clear that, under the model defamation legislation to be introduced, this defamatory nature of the second example would be upheld, but that the regular syndication of content or distribution to a third party of material in the public interest would attract an appropriate defence of qualified privilege. The model legislation states (s34):
It is the finding of the Committee that this approach is appropriate, and balances the needs of Parliament and the rights of citizens.
In considering the issue of webcasting acquisition by the Parliament of Victoria, the Committee observes that the application of shared service or community access provision models may be valuable in optimising the investment in underpinning streaming servers across the State Government, and in partnership with the municipal and community sectors.
Webcasting, and the development of multimedia content in general, have been identified by a number of sectors as valuable technology, but the costs of adoption appear to be a barrier to greater use at present.
As previously indicated, Local Government is a potential beneficiary of this technology in application to its own democratic processes. Mr J. Hennessy of the MAV observed that:
Mr Hennessy also articulated the benefits for rural and regional Victorians:
In the State Government, the use of webcast video has been identified in the Justice portfolio, where the technology has been applied to facilitate the judicial process in situations in which the physical attendance of a witness may be unwise (such as in sexual assault cases) or unnecessary (such as interim bail hearings) (Dr C. Noone, Minutes of Evidence, 17/02/05, p. 31). Similarly, Victoria Police has begun to enter into partnerships with private providers and Local Government to establish security cameras using Internet technologies (Milestone Systems, 2005). In addition, a range of ad hoc uses for the technology has occurred within the VPS:
Arts Victoria oversaw the webcast of the opening of the Melbourne Museum in 2001
The Victorian Treasury provided a live webcast of the budget speech in 2000
A range of departments and agencies are employing video streams to promote activities as diverse as:
The development of rich media content is also an increasingly important tool in education, both at the primary and secondary levels, and through higher education. An increasing number of schools in Victoria are emphasising new media content creation, through participation in 90.7FM Syn FM or via ICT integration in the art curriculum (see, e.g. Northland Secondary College), while the higher education sector has been increasingly exploring the use of streaming technology to deliver educational materials online (see, e.g., University of Melbourne Lectures-on-Demand project).
Overall, therefore, the Committee questioned whether the ongoing development of webcasting and streaming technology in the VPS should be an area of infrastructure acquisition by individual organisations, or whether the range of ongoing applications combined with the rapidity of occasional applications might warrant the consideration of a State-wide approach to infrastructure development which would provide for sharing capacity between organisations or the subsidised use of infrastructure by non-profit community or educational organisations.
This can take a number of forms:
Allowing access to a facility from which streams can be provided
Hosting stored content on a server for a third party
Realtime sharing of a server designed or optimised to deliver video (e.g. a fast distributor).
At the level of physical access provision, the Committee observes that the establishment of three or more locations in the Parliament with access to streaming would allow the Parliament to provide this space to other organisations, where this did not come into conflict with the sitting of Parliament.
In the United States, access to streaming and broadcasting services via the Congress is a regular activity (via the C-SPAN network). The Congress provides access to its broad- and narrowcasting facilities to public interest groups and political associations to broadcast meetings and speeches of public interest. Given the significant investment in infrastructure required for the Parliament of Victoria to establish a webcasting system, it would appear useful to the Parliament to utilise excess capacity in a similar manner. Of particular interest to the Committee was the facilitation of Local Government meetings online (through sharing centralised servers), and allowing public interest groups access to Committee rooms.
At the more advanced level, there is clear opportunity for streaming servers employed by the Parliament to be shared by other organisations, particularly Victorian Local Governments that have limited resources[35]. This may be through providing access to a hardware system established specifically for the Parliament of Victoria (at the server or network level), or through a collaborative purchasing arrangement with a commercial provider (the Committee notes that the Scottish Parliament has outsourced its video distribution provision).
Overall, it would appear that the sector would support such an approach. The MAV's Mr J. Hennessy stated that:
As the use of streaming expands, the Committee has noted that this may be catalytic to the general expansion of broadband uptake and content creation. As Geiselhart and Huta (2003) observe, the appropriate mix of content and infrastructure, supported by government action, can drive an expansion in overall technology uptake in the community:
The point was made to the Committee of the 54th Parliament during its visit to Europe in 2002, by the Municipality of Bollnäs in Sweden, which highlight the relationship between providing information and interactivity, and the responsiveness of citizens to participate via ICTs (Bollnäs Kommun, 2001).
Thus, the Committee considers that the development of Parliamentary webcasting, as one of the most significant applications of this technology in the Public Sector to date in terms of the volume of content, range of stakeholders and necessary issues of legacy system integration and appropriate indexing, should be undertaken in direct co-operation with the OCIO, acting as the oversight for whole-of-governments standards issues. Should the expansion of the use of this technology continue, appropriate participation by the OCIO will allow for:
Effective development of shared service models or joint acquisition and management
Appropriate data collection and project evaluation for knowledge transfer across the VPS.
The Parliamentary webcasting service should be developed in conjunction with the Office of the Chief Information Officer, in order to determine whether this type of online publication service should be developed as an enterprise-wide service to facilitate low-cost access by other Government departments and agencies, Local Government and community organisations.
In addition to the facilitation of information provision by the Parliament, the Committee gave consideration to areas of legislative business in which the use of ICTs could directly improve the operations of the Parliament or enhance the interaction of Parliament and its Committees with members of the public.
This discussion focuses on two areas:
The use of ICTs to facilitate existing activities of the Parliament of Victoria (electronic voting in chamber, receipt of public petitions online, use of streaming or telecommunications technology to undertake the work of committees)
The use of ICTs to increase the ease of, or knowledge
of, consultation and participation processes of the Parliament.
Each area of activity will be addressed in turn.
The Committee of the 54th Parliament received a submission from Mr T. Plowman MP (Submission No. b4), the Member for Benambra, suggesting the incorporation of electronic voting within the Parliament itself.
Mr Plowman observed that electronic voting had been included in the parliaments of Scotland and Ireland successfully (Houses of the Oireachtas, 2002), with the advantage of increasing the efficiency of parliamentary proceedings, through reducing the necessity for MPs to move around the Chamber to resolve divisions. In addition, it should be noted that a number of legislatures in the United States have employed electronic voting systems, including Michigan, Nevada, as well as Congress.
While there is a wide range of different systems that have been employed to undertake this activity, the essential mechanics of the systems are very similar. Individual MPs have access to a voting system installed in their desk (or at a number of locations in the Chamber if they do not have assigned sitting) which allows them to record affirmative, negative or "not voting" responses to the motion being put by the presiding officer.
A central computer, tabulates these votes with most legislatures including a screen that displays the votes cast as a substitute for the conventional method of determining the vote of a Member, through their position in the Chamber. In addition, many of the systems also include the capacity for votes cast to be placed directly onto the legislature's website and to be syndicated by other organisations or groups (e.g. http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/).
Current best practice in the introduction of the systems incorporates them within the electronic business-management software employed to manage parliamentary documents and the order of business. Thus, the implementation of chamber-based voting systems normally include:
The development of the voting software
The development of the security component
Hardware development and installation
Integration with existing systems (business management, Internet publishing)
Development of new display hardware (screens)
Adjustment to procedures.
During the hearings, the Committee did note a number of concerns regarding the use of chamber-based voting systems for Victoria. These concerns were raised by the Speaker, who observed that:
The practice of "party votes" in the Legislative Assembly had been a recent procedural innovation that had been effective in making legislative business more efficient in that chamber
Any system would be complex, as it would require security verification (the entry of a PIN number, physical token or biometric system)
There were concerns about the impact of introducing these systems because of the heritage status of the building and the chambers
The cost of implementation did not justify the implementation overall (J. Maddigan, Minutes of Evidence, 16/02/05, p. 34)
In addition, from experience with the introduction of these systems internationally, it is noted that (Evans, 2004) that the introduction of these systems only becomes effective with large parliaments, ideally with over three hundred members. This is largely due to the cost implications of developing the system, which often necessitates that a large benefit needs to be gained. An example of this is Middlebrook's observation (2003:8) that electronic voting in the Russian Parliament saves more than fourteen minutes per division.
On the sociological side to introducing this technology, the Committee notes that it does have an impact on the traditions of the Parliament. Former Senator Margaret Reid stated that:
While these problems do exist, the Committee observed that:
The introduction of in-chamber voting systems have been undertaken in similar and older parliaments around the world, and that the introduction need not be ruled out due to heritage issues
Wireless devices may reduce the impact of the technology on the physical integrity of the Parliament, but even "wired" simple voting devices need not require significant changes to the Chamber and could be incorporated through existing conduit and power provided for microphones
The "party vote" mechanism does not eliminate the need for physical divisions (the Legislative Council has not adopted this procedural approach)
There has been strong arguments in favour of trialling the system, purely on the basis that time saved in the Chamber would accrue to the benefit of debate (Lundy, 2003; Weinberg, undated:34).
On balance, the Committee turned to Middlebrook's (2003) conclusions, drawn from her assessment of these technologies around the world, that:
Overall, it was the view of the Committee that any savings in time taken to administer divisions would afford the Parliament more time to debate the issues of the day, and provide oversight to the work of Government. Thus, it is the view of the Committee that this approach should be piloted, to determine whether the advantages reported elsewhere can be substantiated in Victoria.
The Parliament, through the Presiding Officers, should undertake a pilot of electronic chamber voting systems to assess the advantages of the introduction of these systems in the reduction of time taken to undertake legislative business.
In line with the general finding that the interaction between Government and the citizens of Victoria should be facilitated via the strategic use and application of ICTs, the Committee has given consideration to means by which the recommendations of Part III can be emulated or integrated into the work of Parliament.
The first area in which interaction between the Parliament and public can be facilitated using ICTs lies in the capacity of the Parliament to use alert services to appraise the public of the work program of the Parliament, and consultation and participation processes being undertaken by the Parliament.
Given the complexity of legislative processes, which can be confusing even for experienced Members, some legislatures have found it very useful to assist the public in following the progression of legislation via electronic notification and tracking systems. One example is the State of Nevada, for example, which provides a subscription service whereby members of the community can track the progress of Bills through the legislative process.
The Committee has already noted (see A Victorian Consultation Portal and Notification Service in Part III) that the Parliament of Victoria should participate in the recommended State-wide portal for this form of notification system, and the Committee reiterates that the points made in that discussion are relevant for the Parliament. In addition, the development of syndicated content publication systems in the Parliament (as outlined above) will allow some members of the public the capacity to develop their own updating news feeds.
It is the view of the Committee that a co-ordinated approach is appropriate, and that the Parliament can become one of the driving agencies in the whole-of-government service offering. The Committee notes that, should the State of Victoria not adopt Recommendation 69, the Parliament should act to develop its own system.
A Parliamentary information subscription service should be provided as part of the proposed centralised consultation gateway and subscription service for the whole of the Victorian Government.
The act of petitioning Parliament is one of the oldest democratic practices in our system of government, dating from the thirteenth century (Parliament of Victoria, 2004). In the modern era, petitions have been a means by which citizens can express concern or dissatisfaction with the work of an organisation such as a government, but can also include non-government organisations, such as corporations. In the parliamentary context, petitions are a means by which citizens can request action by the government or the Parliament, and indicate the strength of feeling in the community through the number of signatories collected.
Traditionally, petitions have been regulated by the Standing Orders of the Victorian Parliament with regard to the format by which they should be presented, use of wording and the method by which petitions are presented to the Parliament. In practical terms, the capacity for concerned citizens to establish a petition and collect signatures tends to be limited only by the physical process of drawing up a petition and distributing it for the collection of signatures. Sometimes a petition is simply distributed within the membership of a group or organisation in which the area of concern is specific, on other occasions petitions are placed in public spaces where general members of the community can access them.
While recognising that petitions are currently facilitated through the Parliamentary website by the provision of detailed information and template documents for their creation, the Committee finds that ICTs can be beneficial in increasing the distribution of petitions, particularly where the individual or organisation who has initiated the petition has limited resources.
A number of domestic and international jurisdictions have introduced online petitions systems, including:
Scotland with the objective of increasing access to the petitioning process.
In addition, a number of non-government websites have been established which allow petitions to be set up independently of government or parliament for a similar purpose (e.g. http://www.petitiononline.com/), and some Local Governments have adopted a similar system for their constituents (Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames).
The Committee recognises and accepts the advantage provided by allowing petitions to be collected online. However, it is also recognised that the ease of access to online petitions can allow their misuse in a number of ways; for example:
The generation of large numbers of frivolous or vexatious petitions
The creation of petitions which fail to meet existing standards for tabling within the Parliament; for example, violation of rules regarding appropriate language contained within the petition
Fraudulent use of the petition system, such as the inclusion of non-existent persons, or signing for a third party.
In order to take advantage of the benefits offered by online petitions, the Queensland Parliament has introduced a procedure and online form to ensure that online petitions are administered in a way that is compatible with the conventional principles governing Parliamentary petitions, as well as to provide a means by which the principal petitioner or subsequent signatories can promote the online petition (Queensland Parliament, 2002).
Evidence from Queensland indicates that the online petition has been popular with residents and electors of the State (receiving 9,975 signatures on thirty-six petitions in the period August 2002 to April 2004; Hogan, Cook and Henderson, 2004:7), and the Committee regards this model as valuable in providing both the advantages of accessibility and safeguards against misuse.
In addition, the appropriate collection of petitioner information via online forms allows the administration of petitions (such as cross-verification of signatories against the electoral roll and introducing means to limit fraudulent signatories being added to the petition; Johnston, 2004) to be automated to the greatest possible extent, reducing the cost of administering this democratic practice.
Evidence from Scotland is also promising, with the Scottish Parliament reporting (Johnston, 2004):
Online petitions can also allow for the capture of optional information, such as petitioners' email addresses, and "opt in" approvals to be notified of the status of the petition, such as its final date of tabling and final number of signatories, and the response made by government to the petition.
The Committee considers that this "active" approach to managing the petition process has a number of advantages, in that it allows citizens who have signed petitions to be informed about the results of their political participation and the specific response made by the Government. Clearly, the collection of personal information in this way requires adherence to the Information Privacy Act 2000, with specific consideration of:
The use and disclosure of personal information, particularly as it relates to the political preferences of individuals
The retention of this data, with specific emphasis on deleting data following the distribution of a response to the petition from the Government.
In addition to this level of interactivity, the Parliament
of Scotland has incorporated within its electronic petitioning system an online
discussion component, which is moderated by staff of the Public Petitions Committee.
As indicated in the discussion of the use of ICTs for consultation and collaboration
in Part III, the facilitation of citizen-to-citizen public debate regarding
political issues is viewed by the Committee as a positive addition to democratic
practice and the level of political engagement and awareness of Victorians.
The advantages of adding a discussion feature to the petitioning process would
be:
The general and diffused benefits of increasing public discourse around political and policy issues, with general benefits to individuals' level of understanding and engagement with the political process
Provision of additional information and debate surrounding the merits of each particular petition, providing potential signatories with more information than that provided by the principal petitioner in the drafting of their petition
Increased information regarding each petition that is available to third parties, such as individual MPs, the media (emphasising the agenda-setting role petitions can play), and government policymakers and implementers.
The introduction of online petitions would require a change to the Standing Orders (ch. 7 for the Legislative Assembly, ch. 17 for the Legislative Council), to provide for the recognition of electronic signatures. Under current legislation enacted by the Victorian Parliament, the Electronic Transactions Act 2000, the Parliament has already recognised that electronic indications have necessitated recognition of legal transactions in which conventional signatures cannot be provided. Based upon the principles articulated in section 9 of this Act, the Parliament could recognise an electronic petition in which the signatories had indicated their approval for the motion to be presented to the Parliament. This section states that the requirement for a signature can be met on an electronic document where:
Finally, the Committee notes that the creation of a system that allows the technology to be shared with other organisations, and particularly with the Local Government sector in Victoria, would appear to be a logical approach in assisting the joint development of the software and encouraging the participative approach of petitioning across the levels of government in Victoria.
In evidence presented by the Speaker, the Committee notes that the Parliament of Queensland has offered to share its software with Victoria (J. Maddigan, Minutes of Evidence, 16/02/05, p. 34), and the Committee considers a process whereby this technology may be collaboratively developed in an OSS environment would provide many benefits to the Parliament of Victoria, and its wider governance environment.
The Parliament of Victoria should introduce an online petitions facility on a trial basis, subject to ongoing evaluation as to the benefits offered to Victorians. The Victorian online petition system should include a moderated discussion facility, similar to that provided by the Scottish Parliament.
This system should be developed in open source, if possible, with access to the code available (at minimum) to the Local Government sector in Victoria.
In making this recommendation, the Committee is cognisant that the extension of "feedback" capabilities to electronic petitioning is an advantage to those who contribute to paper petitions. At present, the signatories of paper petitions are not directly contacted by the Parliament to inform them of the status of their petition. While the distribution of large amounts of paper mail to signatories may not be feasible, the Committee considers that the capacity to respond to email addresses or via SMS, if this contact information were captured on paper petitions, would be a useful approach to further engaging signatories in the Parliamentary process.
This would require the modification of the existing petition templates to capture additional contact information as well as the current physical address of the signatory. In addition, the Parliament may consider valuable the introduction of optical character-recognition scanning to assist in the management of paper petitions. The capture of email/SMS telephone numbers and postal addresses would allow for the automatic generation of response information from Parliament as to the status of the petition.
The Parliamentary template for paper petitions should be amended to allow for optional collection of email addresses or other electronic means of communication, in order to allow the petitioner to receive information about the status and tabling of their petition from the Parliament.
The Parliament should pilot a postal feedback system.
Given recommendations about the adoption of industrial scanning equipment by the VEC for the conduct of elections in Part III, the Committee notes that collaboration between the Parliament and VEC on this matter would possibly be a useful collaborative approach in this particular area of democratic administration.
Outside of the petitioning process, the Committee system of the Parliament of Victoria - like its counterparts around the world - has developed into one of the most active institutional areas of public engagement and interaction of the legislature. During the Inquiry, the Committee was at pains to experiment with a number of new technologies, as well as seek input from experts and practitioners around the world about best practice technologies for investigating committees.
The Committee has identified three specific areas where the work of Victorias Committees could be extended using ICTs:
As a conduit for consultative and participative processes
As the source of new forms of evidence and information
To facilitate communication between Members of Parliament.
As indicated in the discussion of online consultation in Part III of this report, the Committee considers the introduction of online consultation to be a valuable part of all consultation processes, in Government and particularly in Parliament. The Parliament, as a key interface between the public and the legislative and administrative processes, can be afforded clear benefits in harnessing the views and information of the public to guide its investigations and to assist in informed decision making.
It is the expectation of the Committee that the Parliament of Victoria will be a leader in the introduction of, experimentation with, and evaluation of online consultation processes and techniques.
As Professor S. Coleman reported, the House of Commons in the United Kingdom has been highly involved in online consultations, through its investigating committees (2004:2). This work has served to raise the profile of this approach, but more importantly had positive impacts on policy development processes. Professor Coleman stated that:
The Committee finds that any means by which the Parliament can improve and expand its interactions with citizens, and - as in the case with the Canadian consultation on disability pensions and the United Kingdom consultation on domestic violence - expand participation to groups traditionally under-represented, must be investigated as a matter of priority. The Canadian Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities (2003) concluded from its online consultation that:
However, the Committee notes that the introduction of online consultation toolsets by the Parliamentary administrative services will not "jump start" a new era of civic engagement between the Parliament and public. In evidence gathered in discussion with Ms B. Whittaker, Procedural Clerk of the Canadian Federal Parliament, the use of online consultation techniques required considerable commitment of resources. This was not simply to develop and maintain the supporting web infrastructure for the consultation process, but also to support Committee Members through the aggregation, classification and summation of submissions received.
On this subject, Mr Richard Allan MP of the House of Commons, noted that the introduction of online consultation has had an impact on the work of MPs, who need to adjust their working approach accordingly. Mr Allan stated (quoted in Coleman, 2004:12):
Thus, the Committee observes that the process of implementation of online consultation specifically - and greater use of ICTs in general - will take time to develop, through refining the approaches used, and also through the process of education for MPs.
Therefore, it is clear to the Committee that the Parliament will need to consider the best means to assist MPs in using ICTs to increase their productivity, and demonstrate how the use of ICTs expands the reach of MPs into the community without sacrificing other forms of personal interaction with the public.
The Committee feels that this is an area in which the reasonable investment of public resources provides a clear benefit to democratic outcomes. As Mr N. Pastalatzis stated:
The Parliamentary commitment to the introduction of information and communication technology enabled consultation and participation processes must be matched with a tangible investment in staff, training, tools and promotional resources.
The Committee notes, that at present, the Canadian Crossing Boundaries Democratic Renewal Working Group and the Commonwealth Centre for e-Governance are both looking at projects to explore ways to improve the productivity of elected representatives via ICT use, and recommends to the Parliament that close scrutiny of the outcomes of these research projects is warranted.
During the course of the Inquiry, the Committee used a range of technologies as part of its meetings with key informants, and to facilitate meetings. During this process, in addition to Minutes of Evidence and submissions received, the Committee captured a large amount of audio and video material.
In discussions of the Committee with Mr M. Tricarico, the Deputy Clerk of the Legislative Council, it was clear that the collection of material in these formats, particularly that collected outside of the State of Victoria or through electronic means, does not currently fit within current definitions of "evidence" as employed by the Parliament, and does not attract the protection of Privilege.
While the Committee was comfortable in collecting this information as research materials, this matter did raise two questions for the Committee of relevance to the future work of Committees using modern technology:
The extension of Privilege to activities within Victoria only
The capacity to collect Privileged evidence via audio- or video-conferencing facility.
The protection of witnesses before a Committee is provided by section 19A of the Constitution Act 1975, which is clear in stating that:
The Committee notes an inconsistency in the way in which evidence is treated via different media forms. While material provided by email or postal service (submissions) is afforded the protection of Privilege regardless of the location of the author, audio-visual material is not similarly protected. This appears to be problematic, though the Committee does note circumstances in which the Committee receiving the material may be:
Concerned for the legal status of the provider (such as their risk of legal or extra legal prosecution in their jurisdiction of residence)
Suspicious of the identity of the source of the information (and thus prefer a physical document, or attendance at a hearing).
In these cases, however, the Committee considers that the appropriate approach is to devolve these determinations to the investigating committee, which should be able to make these assessments in consultation with its staff and the Clerk.
The capacity for Parliamentary committees to use high-quality audio and video conferencing and for Members whose electorates are remote from Melbourne to use desktop webcasting as part of the evidence-collection process has been demonstrated in the work of the electronic democracy Inquiry, with the Committee successfully - and with a considerable cost saving to the people of Victoria - receiving briefings remotely from a number of key witnesses. This took place on a number of occasions during the electronic democracy Inquiry, including:
While in the United States, bad weather caused the cancellation of a flight from New York to Ottawa, Canada, which prevented the Committee from attending a number of meetings in that city. However, each of the intended meetings was conducted via teleconferencing
Rather than fly the Electoral Commissioner and his deputy to Melbourne to brief the Committee on the Australian Capital Territory's electronic voting system, a commercial videoconferencing facility was used to allow the Committee to meet with the interlocutors - a convenience for the Committee and the Electoral Commissioner of the Australian Capital Territory
Information was collected from an international witnesses via telephone to reduce the costs of the delegation to North America.
The Committee notes that the issue of using audio- and video-conferencing facilities for the collection of Privileged evidence by Victorian Parliamentary committees has already been considered. During the 54th Parliament, SARC noted that:
evidence could be obtained from witnesses outside Melbourne where Parliamentary Committees usually meet, thus reducing travel expenses for either committee members or witnesses;
the time taken by committees to gather evidence in the course of an inquiry could be reduced;
a broader range of members of the community could be involved in a committee's inquiry.
lack of face-to face interaction which may lead to a perception that members are not interested issues outside the metropolitan area;
those members of the community who do not have access to new technologies may feel marginalised;
the possibility that evidence given in private is not secure;
in relation to witness who are not physically present, uncertainty regarding the operation of section 19A of the Constitution Act 1975 which allows committees to administer oaths. (SARC, 2002c)
In essence, the practice of taking evidence via ICT is prevented by uncertainty around two areas:
Questions about the capacity to administer the oath under 19A of the Constitution Act 1975
The capacity to conduct a properly convened meeting of a Parliamentary Committee under the existing terms of the Parliamentary Committees Act 2003 (see Committee Meetings with Remote Participation of Members, below)
On the first matter, the Committee notes that the Constitution Act 1975 states in section 19A:
Thus, the Committee notes that the "uncertainty" identified by the SARC of 54th Parliament focuses on the notion of "before". The Committee proposes the insertion of words to the effect of:
This would appear to directly resolve this issue, while providing safeguards against the misuse of remote evidence collection where risk exists to the Committee or witness. In addition, the Committee notes that investigating Committees of the Parliament currently have the capacity to receive evidence electronically, and that this is similarly based on a determination of the Committee by way of a vote.
Committees of the Parliament should be authorised to take evidence by electronic means and recognise recordings of these meetings as evidence when taken by a constituted Committee (with quorum). This includes:
The submission of evidence via email and instant messaging
The collection of evidence via telephone or like service
Use of videoconferencing facilities.
This authorisation should not extend where:
The respective Committee has resolved not to accept evidence provided electronically as a general determination of the Committee
The Committee feels it will not be able to verify the identity of a witness using electronic communications technology
There is the possibility that "in-camera" confidential evidence will be presented.
However, the Committee notes that, in making this recommendation, the Committee regards the provision of evidence in person as generally preferable. An example of the need for caution would be where a witness, upon initiating their evidence via an insecure video linkage (such as IM client) indicates that they wish a portion to be taken in-camera. In this case, the proceedings would be interrupted as the witness travelled to the Committee to provide this information in the secure environment of the Parliament.
Overall, the Committee considers that the minor amendment to section 19A of the Constitution Act 1975 would resolve ambiguity, while providing a safeguard against misuse. The overall advantage to the people and Parliament of Victoria - the efficient and expedient administrative of routine matters of inquiry - provide a clear justification for adopting a practice increasingly common in professional circles.
The Committee notes that issues of Privilege for those giving evidence outside of the State of Victoria remains problematic, as per the discussion in Parliamentary Privilege Concerns and Narrowcasting (above). This reiterates the need for reciprocal recognition of Privilege throughout Australia (which should be introduced by early 2006). As an interim measure, and as a guide to general practice, administrative steps would need to be taken to protect witnesses appearing via electronic means, such as:
Ensuring witnesses were provided with, or were using, remote facilities that guaranteed their privacy and security
Informing witnesses of the legal implications of participation in their jurisdiction.
Thus, while there may be a range of situations in which the use of electronic communications by Committees is inappropriate, the Committee regards the use of these technologies for routine or non-controversial evidence collection as providing benefits to witnesses and the MPs, in terms of lower costs of participation.
In recommending the use of webcasting, teleconferencing and/or videoconferencing for the collection of evidence, the Committee also observes that there are few technical barriers to allowing Committees of the Parliament to conduct business using these technologies. Allowing a meeting to be conducted via ICT would be of benefit where:
Matters are urgent and a quorum is difficult to establish due to the absence of one or more MPs
Parliament is not sitting and MPs are at a distance from Melbourne
A MP is physically incapacitated, has carer's duties or has been detained
The matter is so minor as not to justify the physical travel of MPs.
This matter was supported by the Members of the Rural and Regional Services and Development Committee (RRSDC) of the Parliament of Victoria, who note the considerable cost to Members associated with travel for routine Committee business. The RRSDC's submission notes:
The Committee observes that precedent for this approach exists, and in some circumstances it has been acceptable for committees to take votes by facsimile - for minor matters. Thus, the general question of remote participation in Committee processes has already been resolved in the affirmative. The Committee notes that the Parliament of Western Australia and the Australian Senate both permit the conduct of meetings via electronic means, with the Senate permitting a range of technologies to constitute an electronic meeting, and the Parliament of Western Australia focusing on video-conferencing facilities.
In the view of the Procedure and Privileges Committee of the Parliament of Western Australia, this approach for deliberative meetings is appropriate:
In addition, as per the discussion in Audio-Video Records as Evidence, above, the SARC of the 54th Parliament has already made explicit comment on this matter in its 2002 Report. The report states that:
Thus, given support for this approach, the Committee gave consideration to barriers that might prevent the use of ICTs to facilitate the business of Victorian Parliamentary committees. In hearings, the President of the Legislative Council, Ms M. Gould, MLC stated that:
This specific prohibition appears to be located in the Parliamentary Committees Act 2003, which states that (ss23-25):
Here the focus in the legislation is the concept of "presence". Thus, to bring finality to the recommendation of the SARC of the 54th Parliament (15.13), and the view of the Committee that electronic meetings be facilitated in for committees of the Victorian Parliament, the Committee notes that an amendment to the Parliamentary Committees Act 2003 is required to the effect of:
It is the view of the Committee that, in practice, Committees should act on this power with due caution, and favour the physical attendance of Members where possible. The Committee observes, however, the use of the unanimous vote as a safeguard against misuse, and that:
Clear guidance be provided to committees about acceptable practice in this area
Emphasis be given to the exceptional nature of the use of these meeting procedures prior to the development of experience with them
Care be taken to emphasise the use of a range of technologies, but also to focus on technological use that does not exclude another Member (such as the use of a single telephone line, which prevents a second caller)
Clear guidance on the need for committees to adopt a resolution on the use of electronic meetings prior to the first meeting.
The Parliamentary Committees Act 2003 should be amended to permit the constitution of Committee meetings with Members participating by audio or video link where:
The quality of this link is such that Members of the Committee attending physically can verify the identity of the absent Member.
The participation of one Member remotely does not prevent the participation of another via a similar means (multiple participation by Members remotely).
The Committee has resolved unanimously to permit the use of these technologies for Committee business.
In the final area of consideration in this part of the report, the Committee notes that discussion of questions of public engagement by the Parliament of Victoria must also give consideration to the use of ICTs by individual Parliamentarians. Members of Parliament, acting as individuals, serve as an important conduit of public concerns into the Parliament, Committee processes and the Parliamentary Party they represent.
The Committee, therefore, considers that the use of technology to support the communications of Members is important to the performance of the Victorian democratic system, and the use of ICTs that make the work of MPs more efficient, or broadens the reach of MPs, represents a worthwhile investment.
The first area of consideration is the publication online of information by Members. Websites have been used by MPs around the world for many years, first as a means of demonstrating their technological literacy and awareness, and then as a means to communicate with a growing online constituency. The range of applications for web publishing is broad, from simple "brochure" websites that provide contact details, through blogs, to very comprehensive sites that might include interactive elements, consultation tools, multimedia and fundraising functions.
Based on the most recent comparative research into the existence of MPs' websites (Table 23, below), the Committee notes that Victoria, in which approximately forty-four percent of MPs provide websites performs comparatively well, but is under-represented when compared with MPs of Westminster or legislators in the United States, where the use of websites of some form is a near-universal phenomenon.
Source: Ward, Lusoli and Gibson, 2004
However, while the existence of MPs websites in Victoria is modest, this is no indication of their quality. In particular, the Committee notes that MPs' websites that have appeal display the following characteristics (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2003; Congress Online Project, 2003; Coleman, 2001; Steinberg, 2001):
Information is up-to-date
The site has a clean and crisp appearance, with links to information highlighted
The site provides a consistent menu system with ease of navigation
The site provides "standard" navigation tools (search engine, site map, index)
Content provided is relevant to the user, with different types of users considered in the design
News and current issues are provided on the main page
Relevant local information is provided, possibly through syndication
There is a customisable subscription and/or syndication service.
And, given the focus of previous discussions in the report, their compliance to a minium level of WCAG would be expected for representatives of the community.
However, it is unclear that these "best-practice" elements are being met. From evidence presented by Mr G. Young of the National Forum, a provider of website design and management services for MPs, there are real problems with the expectation that Members will meet these criteria. Mr Young observed:
Given the modest level of resources available to Members, it is clear that the majority of Victorian MPs have not elected to invest in websites. The Committee regards this level of uptake to date as problematic, and has given consideration to means to address the deficit. While the National Forum (p. 26) proposed the extension of resources for Members to acquire a centralised content management solution, either through a provider like the National Forum or on the Parliamentary website, the Committee is of the opinion that this approach is not appropriate at this time for two reasons.
First, the use of a single commercial or non-profit provider would limit the degree of options available to Members in the design and maintenance of their online information. Given that the political application of websites and online interactive technologies is formative, the Committee regards a more "messy" process of experimentation as appropriate.
Second, while the Parliament already provides each Member with a biographical page, which could be expanded, the clear desire for MPs to have control (as per the discussion above) combined with the political use of these websites for party related partisan activities, makes the Parliamentary website an inappropriate location.
In the United States, the clear distinction between official websites and "campaign" sites is mandated by campaign financing laws and is (generally) strictly adhered to, with the two websites strictly separated - by law - in terms of content, but also without linkages between them. The Committee does not regard this approach as strictly necessary, and the Victorian Parliamentary Handbook online does provide a link to MPs' personal websites. This approach appears to be appropriate and adequate in maintaining the distinction between content published by the Parliament, and content published by the Member.
The Committee observes, however, that this desire for independent publishing by Members does act as a barrier to further adoption of personal websites that support the work of MPs. While the Committee would feel that most Members should have some form of online presence, the slow uptake to date does necessitate a stronger system of incentive and assistance for those Members who have limited staff and personal experience with using new technologies. Thus, the Committee feels that a modest, targeted funding allocation for Members to establish an online presence would be appropriate at this time.
In addition, the Committee notes that, through this specific-purpose funding mechanism, the Parliament can provide each Member establishing a website with advice as to:
Elements considered "best practice" (as per above)
Suggested management strategies
Appropriate advice about promotion and use of the site for citizen engagement
Details of the legalities of maintaining the site.
With regard to the last point, the Committee has noted evidence from the United Kingdom where MPs have registered domain names that specify them as Members of Parliament (for example http://www.jimfitzpatrickmp.co.uk)[37], in violation of electoral laws requiring MPs not to use the title following the dissolution of Parliament (McCarthy, 2005). While the electoral laws are different in Victoria, the provision of relevant regulatory information to Members, including details of the appropriate use of the Internet under Part 9 of the Electoral Act 2002, would be of value to MPs.
The Parliament should provide Members with a specific funding allocation for the establishment of a personal website. This funding should be provided with guidance from the Parliamentary webmaster regarding:
Issues of accessibility
Means to select an appropriate provider (including means to manage online content efficiently and with minimal technical expertise)
Best practices regarding the syndication of content through the Member's site (including Parliamentary information and information from third parties).
Given the identified need for Members to increase their capacity to engage with members of the public using a range of technologies, the Committee also identified a requirement for a more flexible approach in the Parliament to the management of desktop applications. At present, the IT Unit of the Parliament of Victoria provides an excellent service to Members, ensuring they receive a secure, reliable service.
Part of this approach has been to ensure a high level of security for Parliamentary systems, by "locking down" the use of application software on computers used by MPs and their electoral staff. This approach ensures that:
Software used by MPs and their staff has been vetted by the Parliament, and conforms to the needs of the Parliament and the capacity of Information Technology staff to support its use
The software is secure, that risks (security vulnerabilities) have been mitigated, and where new vulnerabilities are identified, these can be managed in a systematic manner
Licensing of software can be undertaken on an institutional basis, ensuring appropriate management of the process, and cost savings over individual acquisition.
This approach has established what is called the Standard Operating Environment (SOE) of the Parliament of Victoria, and is common practice in most large organisations that have concern for security and effective IT management procedures. In addition, a process exists for the approval and acquisition of software outside of the SOE; however, the Committee notes that it is not generally well known to Members, and tends to focus on risk mitigation.
The Committee observes that proposals to encourage greater engagement using ICTs by individual Members will place pressure on this approach and that the current management practice for non-SOE application approval and support may prevent or limit initiatives of individual Members to engage elements of the Community. The range of activities that this will facilitate is large, and depends on the needs of the MP and their constituency. Examples would include:
Interaction between MPs and younger Victorians via IM (as has been undertaken in Queensland)
The creation of audio or video presentations from the MP's desktop environment (as undertaken by Richard Ottaway MP in the United Kingdom).
The Committee notes that issues associated with some of these technologies, particularly around security (IM presents a range of difficulties in this area) and platform stability (video streaming or processing can present difficulties, particularly where software is associated with consumer-level cameras), but that these concerns can be managed and should be mitigated through a clear management process that has as its focus the objective of securing a technology system that allows MPs to achieve the objectives of extending the reach of information they place online, and interacting with citizens.
The Information Technology Unit of the Parliament of Victoria should develop and publicise a clear application and approval process for non-Standard Operating Environment applications.
Email remains, and is likely to continue to remain for some time, a key element of the communications toolset of politicians and elected representatives. While collecting evidence on the use of new technologies by elected representatives overseas, the Committee spent some time discussing email issues with a number of organisations in North America.
During this delegation, the Committee determined that email is likely to remain a highly popular tool for elected representatives and those seeking public office, as it permits fast, customised correspondence with large groups of people, allowing the distribution of multimedia content and quick access to online content, and can be managed through Contact Management Systems (from discussions with Virginia Bramante and Chuck Holmgren, Crossroad Strategies in the United States). Email is specifically employed for political purposes to:
Act as a substitute for conventional letters
Act as a promotional tool, particularly for supporters and donors, and as a replacement for fax lists for media releases
As a means for fund raising, particularly where integrated with an online donations gateway
As a means to co-ordinate and recruit volunteers, particularly where political campaigning must cover a large physical territory, or where the candidate has limited financial resources.
The Committee observed that, while there were a number of
much more sophisticated applications of email overseas (particularly around
integration with mailing lists and its use for micro-fundraising), there appears
to be no significant difference between international use of email and that
commonly found in Victoria. Differences tended to be that of scale, rather than
general application.
In considering the way in which email supports or undermines the democratic
process, the Committee made careful consideration of submissions that addressed
this application. The Inquiry received a submission from Mr K. Beck (Submission
No. a31) which focused on the quality of MPs' use of email. Mr Beck observed
that:
MPs may be unwilling to reply to email from the public that is not from their immediate constituents
Members' expertise with new technologies may be low
Members are often unaware that email can be tracked, with non-responses on issues logged and interpreted as lack of interest in the issue
Multiple emails are forwarded to Ministers on the same issue, or the redirection of emails is undertaken without due regards to the breadth of the issue
Some email replies are of low quality or lack content
The use of automatic email filtering is inappropriate for MPs. (Submission no. a31, pp. 2-3)
While aspects of these concerns were deemed relevant to the Inquiry, particularly with regard to the use of technology by Members to manage their communications flow, the Committee did not feel that it is the role of the Parliament to ensure or guarantee that Members respond to email, or the substantive nature of the correspondence that they send. While some of these issues may be improved through increasing the information literacy of MPs, the Committee notes that there are in place resources for Victorian MPs and their staff to gain access to IT skills training as part of organisational support and allowances provided to MPs through the Parliament. Thus, the Committee is specifically focused on technical issues surrounding the use of email by MPs, and policy and regulatory issues surrounding the political application of the technology.
SPAM represents a growing problem for all Internet users. The prevalence of unsolicited and unwanted (irrelevant) email ("SPAM") will continue to be a problem for users of the Internet, and will continue to incur costs to those wishing to maintain a highly visible online presence (e.g. those who publish their email address widely). This is of considerable importance to MPs, whose email addresses are often widely publicised and who generally wish to encourage contact from constituents via email.
While estimations of the extent of the problem, and its impact on users, vary, the report of the NOIE into the problem of SPAM considered that twenty to thirty-five percent of all email was SPAM in 2003, with this rising to fifty percent in 2005 (NOIE, 2003a:9). Since SPAM consumes bandwidth to transmit, and time to vet and remove, it represents a cost to email users that has been expanding over time.
In 2003 the Commonwealth introduced legislation to regulate the distribution of unwanted email, the Spam Act 2003. Under the Commonwealth's constitutional powers over telecommunications services, this new legislation makes it an offence to send or cause to be sent "unsolicited commercial electronic messages" that have an "Australian link". In this context, an Australian link indicates that the email was sent from, or commissioned from Australia, or has an address accessed in Australia. The Spam Act 2003 also covers other electronic communications (SMS, MMS and IM of a commercial nature).
The limitations of this legislation to cover non-commercial SPAM were apparent during the 2004 national election campaign, during which significant criticism was drawn when a company undertook to send mass electronic mail on behalf of the Prime Minister of Australia to people in this electorate (AAP, 2005). In this case the ACA - as regulator - determined that no laws were violated and questions have been asked about whether the Spam Act 2003 is sufficient.
In evidence presented to the Committee, the Privacy Commissioner, Mr P. Chadwick, made reference to remarks by his Irish counterpart on this issue. The Privacy Commissioner noted that:
There is often a belief that politicians should not be allowed (by an agency like the Privacy Commissioner's office) to contact members of the public without prior solicitation
This problem is related to a lack of awareness by members of the public that political parties have access to the electoral roll, or because they wish to be shielded from messages the content of which they do not agree with (Minutes of Evidence, 18/02/05, p. 7).
In the opinion of the Privacy Commissioner, these views are not in accordance with the necessity of elected representatives and political candidates to communicate with their constituencies as part of the competitive political process. In addition, the Privacy Commissioner noted a number of behaviours that the public found irritating or objectionable, describing these as "arrogance of power":
Automated dialling and recorded message.
Automated faxes.
Non adherence to 'opt out' registers.
SMS texting.
Harvesting of email addresses.
Using charitable databases to deliver political messages.
Rogue member not adhering to party policy. (Minutes of Evidence, 18/02/05, p. 8)
While these behaviours are occasionally observed, and the past Federal election saw the wide-scale introduction of the first, it was not the opinion of the Privacy Commissioner that specific regulatory action was needed in the short term. Speaking about the use of information to target political marketing at members of the public, the Commissioner stated that "... enlightened self interest will act as a natural brake on the abuse of information by political parties".
Political SPAM is also targeted to MPs from groups and organisations wishing to make their points of view heard by the Government and Opposition. While this occasionally represents a significant annoyance to MPs (flooding offices with duplicate email), the Committee regards the "enlightened self interest" constraint as balancing this tendency outside of the party system.
This view was endorsed in discussions with the "supply side" of professional political campaigning during the delegation's visit to Washington. In the Committee's discussions with the staff of Crossroads Strategies, a multimedia and Internet campaigning firm which works with Democrat candidates in the United States, Ms V. Bramante observed that the strongly negative public response to SPAM email was an effective disincentive for its use, with email focused on opt-in lists (candidate supporters) and referral strategies[38]. Similarly, while those attempting to influence law makers in the US have a long history of employing bulk email, Ms Pam Fielding of the lobbying firm e-Advocates indicated to the Committee that this approach was no longer considered to be effective, and that informed practitioners attempted to target and customise messages to Congress using grassroots mobilisation techniques.
Thus, the Committee finds that - while the issue of political SPAM should be monitored, and corrective actions may be required in the future - there are strong social and practical barriers to this practice developing to a problematic extent in Victoria.
Given concerns about the use of automatic filtering systems by MPs, the Committee observed that:
There are a wide array of systems in place to assist Internet users to automatically evade SPAM email. Some of these systems operate at the desktop level, others at the server level, and they exhibit a range of behaviours to address the issue of SPAM. Some systems work by filtering email based on the appearance of key words, specific email addresses or domains of known spammers (a "blacklist" system); others by requiring email to come from a pre-approved list of contacts (a "whitelist" system); or that the initial author respond to an approval email (a "challenge-response" system), and some block emails based on a "library" of known spam
None of these systems can effectively eliminate SPAM. The Committee notes that any automatic system applies a limited set of rules to email it receives, and while the Committee notes that many of these systems produce very high levels of confidence, none can ensure that all SPAM is filtered from the user's account ("false negatives"), or that no non-SPAM is accidentally captured by the filter ("false positives") (Hidalgo, López and Sanze, 2000:99).
The Committee also notes that a recent decision of the House Committee of the Parliament of Victoria supported the introduction of SPAM filtering for MPs as a means to combat the growing problem of SPAM received and its impact on the effectiveness of Members' communications.
Given the importance of constituent email, the Committee considers that the introduction of SPAM filtering systems for MPs should be undertaken with considerable care and include:
Information for Members regarding the effective use, and limitations, of these technologies
Means by which to minimise, to the maximum possible extent, "false positive" outcomes
The capacity for Members to decline to use the technology.
The Information Technology Unit of the Parliament of Victoria should:
Implement and maintain any SPAM filtering system with the utmost care to limit, to the greatest possible extent, "false positive" outcomes.
Advise and inform Members about the advantages and limitations of applying these systems.
Provide a clear means for Members to "opt out" of the use of these systems.
The Committee considers that, given the previous diligence of the Parliamentary information technology support personnel, the IT Unit will maintain a high level awareness of technical developments in the area of SPAM filtering, and provide the IT Committee with updated information on a regular basis where improvements in this technology can be implemented.
In addition, it is the view of the Committee that the provision of additional email addresses to Members, upon request, may be useful in the management of email issues. The Committee felt that a personal email address for Members who receive large volumes of email may be useful in ensuring that certain Parliamentary business can be dealt with in an efficient manner.
The Information Technology Unit of the Parliament of Victoria should provide Members, upon request, with an additional email address.
In addition to the growing problem of SPAM, one of the difficulties encountered by email is the range of information provided by the author as a matter of course. While some authors compose their communications to MPs in eloquent terms, and provide a range of contact information in their email (such as through a signature file attachment), this is not always the case. Thus, while a MP may wish to respond to an email electronically, the capture of additional contact information is useful for those MPs who prefer to communicate via letter or telephone.
The delegation to the United States discussed means to improve the email interactions between elected representatives and the public. In meetings with members of the Congress Online Project, the Committee discussed ways in which email is currently managed by Congressional staff. This issue is set against a background that saw the number of emails received by Congress increasing from twenty million in 1998 to forty-eight million in 2000 (Goldschmidt, 2000). This trend, combined with a desire for Members to move to email following the anthrax scare in 2001, created an "email overload" with real concerns that the level of email was unmanageable and this would result in unresponsiveness by members of Congress.
While the Victorian MPs have not experienced this high level of growth, managing volumes of email is important. In addition, the Congress Online Project recommends that elected representative should take a systematic approach to handling electronic communication, with the use of office systems to store and archive messages, and integrate them in CMS where possible. This ensures that:
Emails are appropriately stored and classified
Management processes (response times, etc.) can be introduced and undertaken without undue manual activities by staff
Email is integrated into other management systems, as appropriate.
Thus, the Committee feels that the introduction of a system of online forms that replace the current Parliamentary practice of simply providing email linkages would be advantageous in that:
The capacity to provide for (suggest or require) the collection of additional information from the public to assist in responding to the enquiry, and automating the management of email correspondence
Accurate time and date stamping in the Member's working time zone
Provide access to email for those infrequent Internet users who do not maintain, or have access to, an active email account
The removal of email addressed from the Parliamentary webpage may provide modest reduction in the number of SPAM emails sent to MPs, where these SPAM are a result of email harvesting robots[39].
The Committee feels that the provision of this service need not be mandated by the Parliament, but taken up at the discretion of the Members. As the maintenance of contact management systems is a task undertaken by each MP - in conjunction with their party - via their electorate office. It is likely that different Members will have different levels of interest in this form of service, and the type of fields (optional and required) that each Member may wish to include in the form could be varied, depending on their operational needs.
References to Members' of Parliament email addresses should be replaced with online forms, if requested by the individual Member. These forms should provide for:
Means to conceal the Member's email address from web crawlers
The capacity to provide a receipt, via email, to the author of the message
The capacity (at the discretion of each Member of Parliament) to capture additional information from the author, such as telephone contact details, preferred means of communication, address, etc.
The final observation of the Committee is the need to facilitate an appropriate online environment for Members through their electorate offices. While the current level of bandwidth provision to Electorate Officers is 128kb/s, the Committee observes that a large proportion of this already consumed in maintaining the Parliamentary Network, and the remainder shared between the Member and one or more office staff.
Given the recommendations of the Committee to provide for:
Access to legislative debates through streaming media content
Potential use of the network to send and receive audio and video content as part of meetings
And the general growth of multimedia content online that may be of relevance to the work of Members
the Committee is of the view that the current provision is insufficient to effectively facilitate the work of Members.
The Committee therefore recommends that this provision level be upgraded, through the selection of relevant technologies depending on the needs of the Member, to provide a service level that permits the sending and receiving of a streaming video. The Committee considers that the appropriate service determination should be determined through the Information Technology Committee of the Parliament.
The bandwidth available to all Members' Electorate Office should be improved to a minimum level required to provide for access to streaming video (download) and application software grade videoconferencing services (upload and download).
Notes: |
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In addition, the Executive may find the approach of value, and international examples of using streaming technology for online media briefings and policy announcements have been noted by the Committee (Casey, 1996). |
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Largely modelled on the Queensland system following a report of the Joint Select Committee of the Parliament of Tasmania in 2004. |
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Currently three members of the Victorian Parliament use a similar domain address nomenclature. |
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Encouraging supporters to pass messages on to like-minded friends, rather than un-targeted or mass emails to large groups of individuals. This approach is sometimes referred to as "viral marketing". |
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Computer programs that "crawl" the Internet
and collect email addresses for SPAM lists. |
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