MORNINGTON Peninsula Shire Council continues to move towards establishing a “transparency hub” on its website, with councillors last week agreeing to its cost being added to the 2024/25 budget. However, public satisfaction with the hub’s content may depend on its acceptance of a definition adopted by councillors in July 2022.
Officially referred to as the Mornington Peninsula Shire Transparency and Integrity Hub, the latest step towards providing online information follows a decision in December to investigate “a low cost alternative” to the estimated $300,000 version recommended by officers.
That decision followed on from a July 2022 “policy statement” committing the shire “to the principles of public transparency”. The adopted statement said the shire considered transparency a “cornerstone of democratic governance.
The latest move towards establishing the transparency hub follows widespread criticism of the secrecy surrounding the shire’s approval for Harry Potter: A Forbidden Forest Experience being staged within the wildlife sanctuary at The Briars, Mount Martha. Councillors were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements before being given details of the nightly performances which have now been moved to the leash-free dog walking area of the property (Potter prepares for new stage, The News 20/2/24).
Cr Despi O’Connor told the Tuesday 5 March public council meeting that the proposed hub would be a “really good start to improving transparency” and access to “real time information that [residents and ratepayers] can get their hands on quickly and efficiently”. It was “a great way to open up the doors of council”. Cr David Gill saw it as a “very small step to transparency”. A major step would be opening up secret councillor briefings. “Being transparent is a much bigger step than [what we are endorsing tonight], but I’m never going to oppose a start,” Gill said. O’Connor: “This is actually a massive step forward. It’s very good. This is starting the journey. “It may seem small because it’s on paper, but it opens the doors to council, and I think that’s the intent. “People will be able to get their hands on data, and that’s what people want to see.”
The July 2022 definition of transparency adopted by the shire: “Organisations are transparent when they enable others to see and understand how they operate. To achieve transparency, an organisation must provide information about its activities and governance to stakeholders that is accurate, complete, and made available in a timely way. Transparency enables accountability.”
Dictionary definitions of transparency are more concise:
- The characteristic of being easy to see through.
- The quality of being done in an open way without secrets.
- Free from pretence or deceit.
- A certain level of openness and honesty is being applied to the conversation in question.
The shire’s customer and transformation manager Patrick Dillon has previously said a transparency and integrity hub would offer “streamlined access” to “selected” and “curated” information which “may” include financial records, asset management (the shire’s capital works program), procurement data “and more” (‘Transparent council.’ Take 2, The News 11/12/23).
“This online hub will allow visitors to explore and visualise data, providing an overview of the shire’s decision-making and activities. This will require the procurement of a suitable web-based platform to publish these datasets for open consumption,” he said. “It will also require the collection, cleansing and curation of each dataset to ensure it is accurate and ready for release.”
First published in the Mornington News – 19th March 2024
