The danger when political parties assimilate the duties of government

While it rarely becomes top of mind for voters, there are times where political parties attempt to take on some of the responsibilities of governments, either because they don’t trust government agencies to perform these duties, or they perceive some form of electoral or financial value in doing so.

A recent case in point is the example of the ACT Liberal party taking on an intermediary role in collecting submissions to a public consultation.

Now I can’t speak for their intentions, and it may seem benign that a political organisation ‘helps out’ by conducting the arduous job of encouraging people to provide their views on a complex governance issue, of collecting and collating these responses and then presenting them to the government of the day for consideration, but I’d like to quickly highlight some of the perils in this approach.

Firstly it is important to recognise that governments and political parties are separate organisations. Political parties are privately owned and run for the benefit of their members, whereas government has a responsibility to the entire community and is, in effect, owned by all citizens. As such their motivations and interests can be extremely different at times, even when politicians from these political parties are elected to parliament and serving as the government of the day.

One of the most striking differences is in their financial motivations. Political parties attract funding from donations, investments, events and membership fees and are constantly looking for additional funds to help them build their structures and campaign more effectively during elections. They operate like private companies with limited scrutiny over their books. Governments operate in an environment of much higher public scrutiny and accountability. You have a right to see how your governments is collecting, employing and disbursing its funds - but no such rights of oversight over the political party that your elected officials belong too.

Similarly governments have certain obligations around privacy designed to protect individuals from undue government interference (noting people may debate whether these go far enough or are equitably enforced), whereas political parties, through the machinations of their elected parliamentarians, excluded themselves from the provisions of Australia’s privacy law. This means they can collect and combine data about any citizen without scrutiny or oversight and citizens have no right to ask what private information political parties hold on them, let alone to correct this information should it be incorrect.

These two areas of difference in combination, financial and privacy, lead to very different motivations and approaches between political parties and governments. For example as there is no requirement for a political party to act in an unbiased manner, it may favour engagements with citizens who pay them more money, via ‘donations’, or who they feel, from the information they hold on them, are more receptive and likely to vote for that party’s candidates to form government.

Governments are not allowed to show such bias, and there can be significant consequences when they do, creating a constant tug of war for elected politicians whose loyalties are divided between their party, serving their big donors and supporters, and the state, serving all citizens on an equitable basis. 

This tension can be managed to some extent in governments, where the public accountability requirements reveal inequitable activities by politicians and provide methods for injecting more balance, or censure - although most politicians do skim as close to the line as they can.

The tension cannot be managed however, when political parties take on roles that government usually performs. Instantly that public accountability disappears and politicians and their parties have a different set of motivations in play, based on party gain rather than public good.

Even when politicians are public minded and seeking to do the right thing, that’s no guarantee that their party machinery, which answers only to itself, not the public, will not use these opportunities to just bias the process a little in their favour.

This is where I come to the example of the ACT Liberals and their role in a public consultation process.

Any individual or organisation can choose to promote a public consultation (I regularly do this myself) or provide a free service where it provides forms for collecting responses, aggregating and submitting them to governments. There’s some notable groups doing this today - including activist and lobby groups like GetUp and the Australian Christian Lobby, retailers like EB Games which provided a response and submission mechanism during the consultation on R-rated games, and industry bodies such as the Australian Mining Council which regularly collects and submits the aggregate views of its members in relevant consultations. Change.org and similar services allow individuals to undertake this appproach in a similar manner - though more linked to petitions than consultation responses.

These groups are all entitled to take these steps, and generally do so in order to promote their ‘side’ of views. The extent to which they will entertain and pass on divergent views differs by organisation, but if you wish to take the chance they will not pass on your response, that’s your decision to make.

Political parties differ slightly when doing this. Firstly they exist outside the privacy act,  are expected entitled to keep everything you say and add it to their file on you, helping them decide down the track whether you are someone they wish to cultivate for donations or would consider helping in a governance matter. As they are exempt from privacy law and  privately owned, there isn’t no scrutiny on whether they modify your submission, aggregate it with others in deceptive ways to push their point or simply withhold it from government altogether.

At the same time the public expectationsof political parties are much higher. If your local member asks you to provide feedback on an issue via their website it can convey the appearance that you are directly responding to the government and thus have the public probity rights you should expect when responding on an agency website, even though you don’t.

This can easily mislead voters with a more limited understanding of our political processes, who trust their elected representative to behave according to government requirements.

In the case of the ACT Liberals there was also the matter of 19 misplaced responses which were caught in a spam filter. 

Tragic to say this has happened at government agencies as well, and I have direct experience of helping agencies resolve this technical problem. 

While it is the headline of the Canberra  Times article, I regard this as less of a concern than the ability of the party to select or reinterpret the responses it passes to government, while keeping all the details of every response in their citizen database for future electoral advantage.

This is a single example of the risks of political parties taking on government responsibilities but serves to illustrate the broader issue. When duties move out of government to party machines we love the ability for public accountability, the tasks are performed by individuals without a contractual and cultural commitment to be apolitical and the motivations change to be less equitable and more ideologically driven.

Whether it is collating consultation responses, negotiating trade agreements, advising the Minister on complex matters, making purchases, providing services or otherwise transferring a government process to a political party team, or some other task, we lose as a democracy when political parties absorb or deliver more of the functions of government.

Even when the intentions are good, corrupting the approach is far easier and less accountable and it undermines our nation when this occurs.

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You've Been Hacked - how far should governments go to protect against the influence of foreign states?

Like most people with a broad digital footprint I've been hacked multiple times, usually in fairly minor ways.

Around ten years ago I had my PayPal account hacked through malware in the Amazon site, costing me $300.

PayPal staff insisted this was a legitimate payment for goods (which I hadn't ordered) being delivered to my legitimate address in Norway (despite having provably never visited the country). I've been very cautious & limited in my PayPal use since, and never recommend them.

Over Christmas last year my Social Media Planner site was hacked and seeded with malware. Fortunately my IT team was able to identify, isolate and address the matter, without affecting visitors, but costing me financially (two weeks downtime). It's fine now BTW, with extra protections in place.

I've had a Skype account taken over by someone in Eastern Europe, who used it for phishing before I could reclaim it, had basic account details stolen in Yahoo, LinkedIn, DropBox and a range of other large-scale hacks of commercial services over the last five years - excluding the Ashley Madison hack (I've never been a member).

I'm not the only one affected by any means, well over 10 billion accounts were hacked in 2016 alone, with Australian politicians, police and judges outed as affected in at least one of these hacks (and a few in this one too).

Much of this widespread hacking results in the theft of limited personal information. On the surface it may appear to pose little risk to individuals or organisations. 

However the individual reuse of passwords and usernames can turn these hacks into a jackpot. This allows hackers, and clients they sell hacked data to, to access a wider range of accounts for individuals, potentially uncovering richer information that is useful for identity theft, economic theft, intelligence gathering or for influencing decisions and behaviour.

Despite all the reports of hacking, it seems many people still treat this lightly - the world's most popular password remains '123456'.

Most governments, however, do not. Securing their networks is a major challenge and a significant expense item. The data agencies hold has enormous political and economic value that could be easily misused to the detriment of the state if it falls into the wrong hands, or into the right hands at the wrong time.

It's not simply about troop movements or secret deals - early access to economic or employment data, access to the 'negotiables' and 'non-negotiables' for a trade deal, or even to the locations and movements of senior political figures (to know who they meet and for how long) can be used for the financial and political advantage of foreign interests at the expense of a state's own interests.

For the most part, Australia's government is decent at managing its own network security. This isn't perfect by any means, but there's a good awareness of the importance of security across senior bureaucrats and largely effective ongoing efforts by agencies to protect the secure data they hold.

However in today's connected world national interest goes far beyond the networks directly controlled and managed by governments. As we've seen from the US (and now Germany), political parties and individual politicians have also become hacking targets for foreign interests,

This isn't surprising. Politicians, potential politicians and even academics have long been targets for funding assistance and free or subsidised study trips to nations hoping to cultivate influence in various ways. In fact these approaches provide some positive benefits as well - by creating personal relationships between powerful people that can lead to improved national relationships, trade deals and even avert wars.

Hacking, however, has few of these positives, as we saw in the release of Democratic National Congress emails by Wikileaks, which were most likely obtained through Russian state-sponsored hacking and likely was designed to influence the US's election outcome.

Whether you believe the cumulative findings of the US intelligence community or not, it is certain that foreign states, and potentially large multi-nationals corporations, will continue to target political parties, and individual politicians, seeking insights into how they think and levers of overt and covert influence for economic and political gain.

Hacking will continue to grow as one of the major tools in this work.

The Australian Government is taking this seriously - and kudos to them for this.

However even this focus on political parties neglects a wide range of channels for influencing current and potential future politicians. What about their other memberships and personal accounts?

Politicians and potential politician are well-advised to position themselves in various community and business groups to improve their networks, build relationships and future support. They are also just as likely as other Australians to use the internet - for work and personal reasons.

This means they're likely to have numerous online accounts with both domestic and foreign-owned services, with varying levels of security and access control. 

On top of this, it's not simply politicians who may be the targets of influence. Political advisors and activists often shape and write party policy positions, despite never being publicly elected. Influence an advisor and you can influence policy, as the many registered lobbyists know only too well.

Equally bureaucrats across government often are exposed to material that could, if shared with foreign interests, cause some form of harm to a state. We've seen this in insider trading by an ABS staff member, where the economic gain to the individual public servant outweighed his good judgement and public duty.

While bureaucrats are security assessed to a significant degree (unlike our politician) and selection processes are in place, backed by rules and penalties, to screen out the 'bad eggs', the potential for public servants to be influenced through hacking their personal accounts has risen along with their internet use.

Right now we're in an environment where the number of attack vectors on a politician, an advisor and on individual public servants, is much higher than at any past time in history - while our tools for protecting against foreign influences have not kept up.

Of course this goes both ways - our government also has the capacity, and often the desire, to influence decisions or negotiations by other states. We've seen ample evidence of this, although it isn't really a topic our government wants to discuss.

The question for me, and I don't have a solid answer yet, is how far technically should a government go to limit the influence of foreign states.

Should governments merely advise political parties on how to secure themselves better?

Or should governments materially support parties with trained personnel, funding or even take over the operation of their networks (with appropriate Chinese walls in place)?

What type of advice, training or support should agencies provide to their staff and Ministerial advisors to help them keep their entire footprint secure, not just their use of work networks, but all their digital endeavours?

And what can be done to protect future politicians, advisors and bureaucrats, from wide sweeps of commercial services collecting data that could be useful for decades to come?

We need to have a more robust debate in this country about how foreign states and commercial interests may be seeking to influence our policies, and decide as citizens the level of risk we're prepared to accept.

Until this occurs, in a mature and informed fashion, Australia is hurtling forward into an unknown future. A future where our political system may be under constant siege from those who seek to influence it, in ways that are invisible to citizens but more wide-reaching and dangerous to our national interest than any expense scandal.

If this isn't the future that we want, then it is up to us to define what we want, and work across government and the community to achieve it.

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Is it time for governments to extend digital security protections to all parliamentary candidates & parties?

Over the last few years we've seen increasing attention on the use of personal technology by politicians.

From our current Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who uses Wickr, to Hilary Clinton's use of a personal email server, and even the struggle President Barack Obama faced to use an iPhone, politicians - like the rest of us - are increasingly using a diverse range of technologies to conduct both personal and official business.

Not all of these technologies are officially approved or secured. Many are newer technologies with both known and unknown security concerns.

However politicians, like the rest of us, continue to use them either because we perceived the benefits (convenience, flexibility, speed, utility) far outweigh the risks we accept, or because the risks are not clearly understood by non-technical people.

This becomes a particular issue for politicians, political parties and individual candidates for parliament when state-sponsored agents, organised crime or unscrupulous businesses attempt to access their information.

There's many motivations for 'political hacking' - commercial advantage where particular information or decisions are obtained before the market knows, political advantage, blackmail or an improved capability to 'groom' politicians to a given perspective supportive of a particular desired goal or outlook, or opposing an undesired reform or initiative.

In fact I think it can be said that political power doesn't only originate from the muzzle of guns, but now political power also emerges from the keyboard.

Information is power, and the best source for information about an individual's views and decisions can be their private email and social accounts.

With the revelations of Russian state-sponsored hackers penetrating the Democratic National Convention and Clinton's Presidential campaign data stores, it's clear that state-sponsored and other organised hackers are increasingly seeing unelected potential parliamentarians as targets.

This is a logical development. It's in the interest of foreign nations to understand the views and decision-making approaches of powerful national leaders. Combine this with the likelihood that the security deployed by a political party is far easier to penetrate than the security deployed by a national government, and the fallout if caught is far less and it becomes a no-brainer for nations and large commercial interests to conduct hacking before an election locks away leaders behind tighter firewalls.

So, now we know that there's a reasonable to high risk that electoral candidates and parties will be hacked - particularly if they have a good chance at election - there's a question for governments to consider.

Should governments extend their security expertise and protections to all electoral candidates, placing them behind state-supported firewalls and security provisions, as soon as candidates nominate for electoral roles? And should this protection be extended to all political parties as well?

Given that even medium-sized governments, such as Australia's, secure hundreds of thousands of devices and people through their security regime, extending this to a few hundred more would be a technically manageable exercise.

The approach would help protect more of Australia's governance institutions from foreign and commercial influence, though likely would only be a partial measure as traditional intelligence gathering and governance influencing methods (background research, infiltrators, electoral donations and hosted trips and tours) would still be available to interest groups and countries.

Individual politicians and candidates would still have personal digital accounts vulnerable to hacking, with which they may engage with the public, the media, each other, business partners, friends, family and, occasionally and hopefully discreetly, with potential sexual partners.

So perhaps the step would provide partial protection - avoiding situations like the one the US Democrats have found themselves in, where the long-term ramifications are as yet unclear.

However even government systems are not totally impervious to cyberattacks, and the limitations of working within a government firewalled system might be too invasive or restrictive for some in the political world.

Also in a world where no security is perfect, partial protection can provide an illusion of security where none should be assumed, with the potential that protecting candidate correspondence could lead to more significant information theft or leaks from either hacking or internal disgruntled staff - or the misuse of candidate data by a future unscrupulous government to influence an electoral result.

On balance I think we're going to have to take our changes over whether political parties and individual candidates are hacked by foreign or corporate interests.

No security solution will ever be perfect and so Australia, and other nations, need to focus less on hiding potentially damaging information and focus more on developing transparent and fair agendas, with individual candidates and politicians being as honest and forthright as they claim their opponents should be.

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Don't let a focus on quick wins lead to slow losses

These days it seems almost everyone in government is focused on quick wins - outcomes that can be achieved fast, with limited resources but a big impact.

I recognise the logic. Going after low hanging, minimal risk, cheap and (sometimes) easy, quick successes satisfies both the insatiable desire for Ministerial media announcements and helps build trust within an organisation.

The theory is that a series of quick wins will lead to more freedom and resourcing to go for larger (and longer-term) victories, getting to work on projects that matter, changing lives for the better and improving real outcomes for citizens.

I saw, and continue to see, fantastic operators across government striving for that one more quick win that will convince senior managers or Ministers to give them greater responsibility, more resources and a chance to make a real difference. I get asked regularly by agencies for ideas or proposals that can be delivered fast, will have huge impacts while costing them almost nothing.

At times it almost appears like an addiction, "just give me one more hit of that quick quick win, then I will be respected and allowed to focus on the real game, the big picture."

Unfortunately this theory doesn't always hold up in practice.

Sometimes a series of quick wins is just a series of quick wins, with no scope for bigger, better or more effective things.

The Minister or Secretary's eyes may turn to you approvingly, and you may still be relied on when the chips are down, but this may only be when more quick wins are needed - when resources are tight, timeframes short and the wrong team in place.

If your quick wins seem only to lead to more 'opportunities' for quick wins, if your ability to overcome bureaucracy, internal politics, lack of resourcing and mediocre staff is recognised and rewarded by new projects ('challenges') with even less resourcing, more politics and bureaucracy with teams that can't work together - you're simply trading your quick wins for slow losses.

Eventually you may be put into a position where no win is possible, Keep in mind that failure is still remembered and 'rewarded' in most of the public service far longer than success.

So when you're looking for that next 'quick win' that will make management love and trust you, keep in mind that sometimes you'll have a bigger win by staying off the treadmill.

Yes quick wins, used strategically, can open doors for bigger successes, but that's not a given. Make sure the wins you're chasing will have broader positive outcomes than simply demonstrating your ability.

Focus on working on things that matter (to misquote the Digital Transition Office). Your wins will count as more than quick, they'll make a real difference, to the citizens you are serving, to the government and to you.

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We could resolve the electoral donations dilemma with a little digital thinking

One of the significant news stories in Australia this week is the revelation that Bill Shorten failed to correctly disclose a $40,000 electoral donation in a timely manner - breaching parliamentary requirements.

This is far from the first time a politician has done this, with repeated errors in declaring donations an ongoing issue for both major parties in Australian politics, and even affecting several minor parties and independents.

This has been called a crisis of trust, and one result has been calls for full public funding of elections - an approach that has been tried to some degree in a few other jurisdictions around the world.

Where full or near-full public funding has been attempted it has faced both legal controversies and difficulties in finding a formula that effectively funds established parties without closing the door on new electoral entrants or unfairly benefiting incumbent governments.

Australia already has partial public funding for elections, paid on a per vote basis. At the last election in September 2013 a total of $58.1 million was paid out, on the basis of $2.49 per first preference vote for candidates receiving at least 4% of the primary vote.

This 'flat rate' isn't necessarily a perfect solution either - it doesn't take into account the size of some of Australia's electorates (from Wentworth at 30 square km to Durack at 1,587,758 square km), or the significant differences in the number of voters per electorate (from 62,917 in Lingiari to Fraser with 143,564 voters). It is also open to manipulation by governments or major parties, as the amount per vote, or the threshold for payment, can be altered through legislation passed by a majority in both houses of parliament.

There's also other flaws with Australia's electoral donations laws, with donations often declared publicly through the Australian Electoral Commission 12 months or more after they are donated - often well after the election that the donors may be seeking to influence - leaving voters unable to consider the donations in the context of how they choose to vote.

Electoral donations are also often an area of contention for Australian state, territory and local governments, with varying laws in each jurisdiction, often modified by governments to suit their electoral needs. In particular NSW recently had over 10 Liberal MPs resign the party and several resign parliament due to irregularities as to who they received donations from, or roughly 25% of sitting members in their previous Liberal government.

There's also been cases of parties moving money between states or to and from their federal parties in order to evade stricter electoral declaration rules, and other kinds of shenanigans with the system between funds donated to individual politicians and to their parties.

It seems to me that a little digital thinking could resolve a large proportion of the issues with Australia's donation system, both ensuring donations are recorded and allocated appropriately and declared rapidly to the public.

Why not build a central donations website for collecting and declaring electoral donations for all parties.

The site, potentially called the Australian Electoral Donations System  (or AEDS for those who love acronyms), could provide a single electronic gateway for individuals of any political belief to donate funds from their bank account, credit card, paypal or other account to the candidate(s) and party(ies) of their choice. Every donation could be electronically transferred to the correct recipient and declared in real time as the electronic transfer occurs.

The AEDS could support both personal and corporate donations, including cash donations at events and gold coin donations, through becoming the official way of issuing tax receipts for all donations, making it unacceptable to simply hand candidates 'brown bags' of undeclared cash (a form of donation that is already illegal but hard to trace).

For easy event management, attendee management and an auction component could be built into the AEDS and a mobile app or web service used for recording donations (and attendance) at electoral events - mitigating the current issues with tracking and identifying donations through vehicles like Joe Hockey's 'North Shore Forum'.

It would become far easier for the public to see who has donated what to which parties - on a near-real-time basis, and the Australian Electoral Commission would be able to detect issues much faster - particularly where declared party income and expenditures don't match up. The AEDS may also help the Tax office to track the movement of funds and following up to verify that individuals and organisations are reporting their earnings and expenditures correctly, and even support police in identifying criminal activities linked to donations.

Done right this central donations website could even turn a profit - by taking a percentage of every donation towards its operating costs. Given that $10 million or more is given each year in donations to the federal parties (and that's only counting donations over the current $12,500 donation level), a 10% processing charge for using the AEDS could more than cover the ongoing costs of the service. This could be potentially a much lower charge when considering all the smaller donations (from $2 to $12,499) made at federal level and all of the donations to state and local politicians and parties.

The AEDS could be set-up as a start-up and run as an independent body - or even become a listed entity on the stock market (possibly expanding into offering similar electoral donations systems for other nations).

At worst case, the AEDS could be run under the auspices (or with board oversight) of the Australian Electoral Commission - though given their struggles to update their own technology I doubt the organisation has appropriate management to operate such a significant system.

Of course it would be a crazy entrepreneur to set up such a system without agreement and legislation by government, so the first step must be taken by parliament to recognise that the current electoral donation system is destroying trust and damaging the legitimacy of government - creating a strong perception, if not a reality, that our politicians are, if not for sale, at least for rent by the largest donors - be they corporations or organised crime.

Would our parliament countenance such a move?

I hope so. Removing the difficulty of managing electoral donations from parties, and the embarrassment politicians face when someone in their office forgets or incorrectly declares a donation, or they accidentally take money from an illegal donor, this type of independently-run electoral donation system would both make the lives of politicians easier and reduce their stress levels, while potentially lengthening their careers.

I've thought a great deal about how this system could work, and the problems it may face, so if anyone in government wants to discuss the idea further, drop me a line.

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Why not elect our political system as well as our politicians?

History has shown that over time it is inevitable that any human political system will be gamed by those who wish to gain from it.

Some is done with the public good at heart, to fix system and policy flaws, some is done based on ideological belief and some is done out of pure selfish motives – profit and power.

Whether it be politicians voting themselves pay rises and greater powers, advisors playing influence games on policy while pocketing lobbying fees, bureaucrats over-classifying material and splitting legislative hairs to protect their agencies and Ministers at public cost, corporations and their representative groups influencing policies and laws to their own advantage or foreign nations seeking to press their own national interests, there’s many groups with many reasons to subvert any political system.

The traditional approach to checking this subversion has been through institutional checks and balances and the existence of a constitution or similar foundation document which defines the spirit and the actual limits of governance. These controls work to some degree, allowing nations to thrive for decades without renewing their political systems.

However in certain cases this ends up with nations surviving on momentum alone – as institutions continue to serve their functions for years after their funding is cut below sustainable levels and politicians hold to the words, if not the spirit, of the governance intent of a nation’s ‘founding fathers’.

We see this today where governments allow important institutions and infrastructure to run down, continually being asked to do more for less; in the redefinition of human rights and freedoms, such as limiting them to citizens or even to just citizens with the financial capacity to afford them; the compromises politicians tell us are for our own good; and in failures by the corporations that run traditional media to hold a mirror to the conduct of other corporations and politicians in order to maintain their revenues and influence.

Of course under democracy we have the right to throw out our government and replace them with another – a cycle that has sped up globally over the last fifty years as people are more rapidly dissatisfied with how the stated goals of their elected representatives are translated into action.

However this electoral process increasingly resembles a simple rearrangement of the deckchairs, with politicians using science, psychology and marketing to identify where they should differentiate themselves or mirror the policies of other parties.

It has become increasingly hard to differentiate the different political brands as they have professionalised, replacing leaders with managers and true believers with corporatised career officials, whose goal is simply to take and hold power rather than to benefit and improve the lot of citizens.

This leads to even more gaming of the system – ‘preference whisperers’ advising minor parties how to structure preferences to maximise their chance of a seat, politicians who have realised that electoral promises are non-binding and can be discarded as soon as power is gained, an army of unelected partisan advisors who feed from the public purse but whose actions are not scrutinised as are career bureaucrats, and the casualisation of the public service, where cutting headcount is mandatory and agency heads and managers rename units or sack and reemploy bureaucrats as contractors and consultants to move them between funding and headcount buckets, regardless of the lost expertise or increased costs.

So perhaps we need to think outside the box of electoral democracy and think about the system itself.

What’s the best way to prevent people from gaming a system over time? Changing the rules.

We have mechanisms for doing this now – through courts and the constitution. However these mechanisms are under the oversight of elected politicians and are very difficult to change – particularly when the incumbents are happy with how things work, even if they don’t deliver the outcomes the public expects.

How about instead if we put our entire governance system up for election on a regular basis, perhaps every 12 or 20 years, allowing the public to vote on whether they felt the existing system still satisfied the needs of the nation, or whether it needed to be changed?

Perhaps Australians could vote to affirm or change the preferential system of electing representatives to a proportional or first past the post approach, change the period between elections from a variable three years to a fixed five year term, or limit the time that politicians can remain in office or as a Minister to a few terms.

Perhaps Australians could choose whether we ban all political parties, have an elected head of state, change the size or number of state governments or reallocate policy and service responsibilities between governance tiers.

Perhaps we could choose to have appointed, not elected, Ministers, or to have citizen panels, selected in similar ways to juries, provide formal and ongoing oversight to Ministers, or make decisions on key policy areas.

We could choose whether to have the entire electoral population vote on key decisions and programs – the budget, major national infrastructure, on whether to commit Australia to wars.

Of course there needs to be some structure behind this to allow it to work successfully – and there’s also the potential for this system of voting for our governance system to be itself gamed.

However given the increasing calls for change in our electoral system and governance model, not simply in the politicians who we may elect within it, it’s definitely worth considering more than electoral reform, but governance reform – with the public, the citizens and shareholders in the nation of Australia, being the people who choose how they are governed, not simply who governs them.

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A view on the maiden tweets of Australia's federal politicians

A politician's maiden speech in parliament is usually constructed with great thought and care. It serves as a platform on which they plan to stand for the rest of their term, the issues they intend to prosecute and the topics on which they prefer to engage.

However can the same be said of their first tweets?

I've compiled all of the first tweets of our currently sitting federal politicians (the 79% with Twitter accounts) into both a timeline and a word cloud to provide a glimpse into how much thought they put into their first declaration on this highly public platform.

You may judge for yourself whether the first tweets of politicians provides an insight into their character, interests and key concerns - noting that only one current federal politician created their Twitter account before entering politics.

Data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ap1exl80wB8OdFFaYk9NYkhPaXB6aU5yTDF0S21ocWc&usp=sharing

Wordle: www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/8140372/First_tweets_from_current_Australian_federal_politicians

Timeline: cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline/latest/embed/index.html?source=0Ap1exl80wB8OdFFaYk9NYkhPaXB6aU5yTDF0S21ocWc&font=Georgia-Helvetica&maptype=toner&lang=en&hash_bookmark=true&width=560&height=840

The most common words from the first tweets of current Australian Federal politicians

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New South Wales's iVote® system - an interview with Ian Brightwell

This is the second in a series of interviews I'm doing as part of Delib Australia's media partnership with CeBIT in support of GovInnovate. I'll also be livetweeting and blogging the conference on 25-27 November.

View other posts in this series.

If I had to pick someone to be in charge of developing an electronic voting system, I’d want them both to be highly skilled at technical project management and a passionate supporter of democracy.

Ian Brightwell fits both criteria in spades.

“My first voting experience was in 1974 when the Whitlam government was re-elected. Then in 1975, when this government was dismissed, I recall seeing people arguing in the street over politics, which I had not seen before and indeed not seen since.”

“After the dismissal in 1975 and before the election, no-one I knew said they would vote liberal, and then we saw a liberal landslide. It was at that point I realised the virtues of our electoral system and value of the secret ballot, allowing people to express their view without undue influence from others.”

As the CIO of the NSW Electoral Commission, Ian Brightwell is responsible not only for all of the commission’s IT infrastructure, but also for Australia’s most exciting online electronic voting initiative, the iVote® system.

The iVote® system is an internet-based voting platform which has been custom-built to support the NSW government’s requirement for remote voting at parliamentary elections. Under current legislation only electors with vision or physical disabilities and remote or voters absent from NSW on election day are entitled to use the system.

In 2011, the first time the iVote® system was used, some 46,684 electors used it while over 200,000 people are expected to use the system in the next state election in 2015.

Ian says that despite the limited number of voters currently entitled to use the iVote® system, it has already demonstrated its value.

In 2011, he says, there was a much larger group of out-of-state voters than they had seen in previous elections, as people didn't have to go to specific locations to vote.

Ian says he can see the iVote® system being expanded to other groups of voters in the future, but at this stage he is comfortable with using the platform for those voters the Commission find difficult to service– where it is hard to get to them manually –it also allows more time for the system to be refined before it is scaled.

One group Ian identified as a potential future target audience were postal voters.

The head of Australia Post has said that first class mail may not be available within 5 – 10 years as a result of Australia Post reducing postal services in line with declining demand. On this basis it is possible that all Australian jurisdictions with postal voting will need a replacement approach for future elections.

He also sees absent voting at local government elections as an area the iVote® system can help. This is particularly a concern because NSW’s Local Government legislation doesn’t permit absent voting at a council elections (this problem will be exacerbated if the proposal by Sydney City Council to require businesses to vote is enacted). For NSW local government elections there’s around 300,000 more non voters fined than at state elections because absent voters are not able to vote.

Another area of interest has been for plebiscites and ‘mini-polls’. Ian demonstrated the system at Parliament House in Sydney, primarily to minor party representatives. They were excited about the potential for using a system like iVote® to include more direct democracy in our system through polling voters on what they thought on different topics.

Ian isn’t sure this is necessarily a good idea, “I’m not sure voters are always well placed to make decisions on complex individual topics, due to the depth of material to absorb and the range of options, but it is an interesting proposition which needs further exploration.”

He believes that “voters are far better at picking the people they want to represent them for parliamentary decision-making.”

Ian does however believe that the iVote® system could be valuable for referendums, which he says there’s a current reluctance to run due to the cost, “the marginal cost of electronic voting, once the system is established, is much lower than that of paper voting.”

One area that Ian doesn’t see the iVote® system moving into any time soon, is replacing the local voting booth.

He believes paper voting is a key method for retaining confidence and trust in the electoral system – particularly given the concerns that have been raised overseas with electronic voting systems in physical locations.

Ian also said that, “for the most part with our current arrangement, replacing attendance paper voting with electronic attendance voting would be quite costly, and there would have to be clear set of benefits to offset that cost.”

Ian believes there isn’t a strong push for Australia to move to electronic attendance voting as there’s sufficient trust in the existing electoral system.

However, he says “with manual systems voters have to trust electoral authorities to do their job and although there is some ability for voters to see this in polling places there can be no evidence votes are finally counted as cast because the final count happens weeks later in remote offices and electors cannot observer this process.

However, with an electronic system you can provide the elector with a little more transparency, though they will have to understand the more complex electronic process to fully appreciate the verification information they have been provided – it’s a different kind of trust.”

Speaking of trust, the iVote® system has been designed with modern security to ensure that the system is as secure and unshakable as possible. Ian says they have updated the security and will conduct penetration testing to mitigate the risk of hacking at the 2015 election.

Also, he says, as the system is in place only during election periods, there’s a very limited window for a hacker to break through security and alter the results.

While no electronic system is perfect, he’s confident that his team has done everything possible to ensure that NSW voters using the iVote® system can trust that their vote will be recorded and counted accurately.

Ian says that the international experience has been that electronic voting isn’t a universal preference if offered to all electors anyway, “a few countries have offered electronic voting to all citizens, and have found that it peaks out at 20-30% of voters, with others preferring physical polling places or other forms of voting.”

“In Australia voting is a community and social activity and taking away a polling place from a small community can create enormous controversy and concern in the community.”

Ian thinks that we should not take away from physical voting or the opportunity for civic social contact, but definitely should offer a diversity of ways to vote, with electronic voting part of the mix.

In particular Ian said that there are issues with areas, with large and growing populations, where in older areas the available polling places can get overrun and newer areas there are no available venues for polling places. He says there is a need to manage the pressure on the attendance voting system which is already feeling over loaded.

While the iVote® system may not be used now to replace physical voting, this still leaves a large number of voters it can service. Ian says that these days 20-30% of votes are not attendance votes (in district votes in a polling places or pre-poll).

an also says that, from the data we have on voting patterns by voting channel, all voting channels generally have a similar electoral outcome. That is electoral commissions see similar voting trends across attendance, postal, absent voting channels. Electronic voting in NSW in 2011 was no exception, it gave a similar electoral outcome to other channels, so in the future this pattern should hold for other jurisdictions that choose to use electronic voting. This is a useful way of determining if major electoral fraud has occurred in just one voting channel.

While the iVote® system has been designed for NSW state voting, Ian’s team kept in mind that it could be used for local government voting in the future. He says that NSW has far less turnout for local elections, “we send out up to 300,000 more penalty notices for local government voting than for state voting.”

Ian also says that other states and territories are watching his team’s work closely, “we’ve had lots of interest from other states, federally and overseas, and expect interest to translate to some action after the next election.”

Looking into the future, Ian said that he didn’t see huge change in voting approaches in the next five to ten years, but expects an ongoing shift from postal to electronic and increasing levels of absent voting driving electronic voting.

He also sees increasing levels of early voting being the first avenue for attendance electronic voting being used “it is already immensely popular and we see 50-100% increase in early voting election on election - but parties hate it as they have to get their party volunteers there for 2-3 weeks prior to election day and it is hard for them to manage their election message. The public love it as it frees them up on election day. The reality is the public will win this one in the long run.”

Australia already has a very high voter participation rate, so while in the US electronic voting may be seen as a way to raise voting participation, Ian says that’s not a consideration in Australia, “as we have such a high participation rate we have has bipartisan support for electronic voting.”

You’ll be able to hear more from Ian at GovInnovate on 25-27 November in Canberra.

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92% of Australia's federal politicians now use Facebook and/or Twitter

I've been tracking the number of Australian Federal politicians using Australia's leading social channels for two years now, seeing the number using at least one of Facebook and Twitter grow from 79% in April 2012 to 90% in November 2013 to a current level of 92%.

What's even more interesting is in the details, which you'll find in my thoughts below.

 To access the raw data and statistics, go to my latest Google Doc at: docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ap1exl80wB8OdFhaQ1gzdzg3d1VWcFJpSl91bkQwbWc&usp=sharing

While the overall use of social media is at 92.48%, or 209 out of 226 federal politicians (150 Members of the House of Representatives and 76 Senators), the situation is very different between the houses.

The House of Representatives has a far greater level of social media use at 95.33% compared to the Senate at 86.84%. The gap has remained consistent with my last review in November 2013, where it was 92.67% compared to 85.14%. Senators, on average, are slightly older than Representatives (51.55yrs versus 50.19yrs), which is likely a factor, as is the consideration that Senators don't campaign in the same way as Representatives due to the difference in how they are elected and who they represent (states/territories, not electorates).

I still believe that Senators are missing a trick here - due to their different responsibilities in most cases they represent much larger electorates and thus social media can be of value for listening to and engaging with people they can't as easily drive out to see face-to-face.

This rationale also carries over to Representatives with geographically large electorates, such as in the NT, WA, SA and Qld.

I am particularly glad to see that the Nationals, who focus on rural and regional seats and were previously the party whose elected politicians were least likely to engage online, has picked up their act in this area, and 19 of their 20 elected members now uses social media, a greater proportion that either Labor or Liberals (and I count Qld LNP Nationals as Nationals federally).

Social media remains very important for smaller parties to get their message out, with the Greens maintaining their 100% use of social media and every other minor party (KAP, PUP, DLP, Family First) and independent politician using social to some extent.

I see the same trends we've seen in previous years from politicians, and the population in general, still hold true.

Similar to my past reviews, female politicians are more likely to use social channels than male politicians, though by a smaller margin (4% rather than 7%) than previously.


Equally, the older a politician is, the less likely they are to engage on social media, with a clear divide by decade.


This reflects the same phenomenon as we see in the community - with politicians aged 60+ far less likely to use online channels for engagement, and those aged under 45 likely to use it as one of their primary ways to communicate and collect information.

This tends to suggest that the maturity of political decisionmaking regarding the internet is likely to continue to improve as older politicians retire and younger digital natives take their place.

For your reviewing pleasure, below is an infographic with some of the key statistics, please have a play with the interactive elements - they provide an interesting view of how actively different groups of politicians engage via Twitter and Facebook.

Australian Federal politicians - Twitter and facebook use - AUG 14 | Create Infographics

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Young people in Australia are highly engaged in politics - but engagement has moved online. Have governments?

A few years ago I heard it said by political advisors that one hand-written letter to a Minister counts for more than 100 emails on the same topic.

The perception was that if someone sat down and wrote their thoughts in long-hand it showed more interest and commitment than if they typed and posted them online in a blog, social network or website.

I believe this has changed slightly, with emails now accorded almost equal status with postal mail (largely by treating them in the same manner as postal mail, which isn't always appropriate).

However the value placed on blog posts or social media commentary by both politicians and departments still remains far lower than the value that individuals using these channels place on their communication via these channels.

This discrepancy becomes particularly concerning when looking at the level of political activity amongst younger and older people in Australia.

Based on the 'traditional' forms of political engagement - joining political parties, participating in street protests, writing letters and otherwise using physical means to communicate political views - young people are generally considered unengaged, even disconnected, from politics.

This appeared to be supported by a recent study by the University of Canberra commissioned by the Museum of Australian Democracy. (reported on by the ABC and Hijacked)

This study found that, based on these traditional forms of engagement, young people were far less engaged than older people. In fact people aged under 35 were only about half as engaged as those over 70 years old, and were the least engaged of any age group.

Source: ABC Lateline

However, the study went much further, looking at modern forms of political engagement - blogging, tweeting, memes, apps and other digital techniques - as well.

When combining traditional and modern forms of engagement the situation was very, very different.

Suddenly young people were just as engaged as the oldest Australians and more engaged than many of the age groups inbetween.

On this basis, including both marching in the streets and creating online petitions, young people are quite engaged in politics in Australia, with a large amount of their engagement occurring online rather than offline.

This can be hard for older Australians to grasp - they often don't understand the internet as younger people do, having been brought up on newspapers, radio and television.

Not coincidentally, a disproportionate number of our politicians, top bureaucrats, corporate leadership and leading journalists fall into these older groups - therefore they are often not equipped to even see, let alone understand, the ways in which younger people are engaging politically.

This divide isn't necessarily a problem, but it could become one. When insisting that young people follow the same political approaches as their elders, older people are devaluing newer forms of political expression and underestimating its reach and force.

Where politicians, departmental Secretaries and CEOs gauge the public's mood by signals such as how many people show up to protest, they may overlook the new signals, when hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people organise and protest online, until it is too late for them to change course.

There have already been examples of how politicians, media and CEOs have misread the public mood as they still rely on traditional, rather than modern political signals.

Until our 'elders' begin to recognise that times have changed and continue to change, they will continue to be blindsided as innovation continues in political protests.

For example, there was the creation of the Stop Tony Meow plug-in for Chrome, which replaces images of Tony Abbott in the web browser with pictures of kittens. The plug-in has been downloaded over 11,000 times and attracted significant media coverage as an anti-Coalition political statement.

There's also been the recent Dolebludger app available for Android mobile devices, which allows someone to send job application emails in a matter of seconds to 40 Coalition MPs, meeting the proposed monthly job application requirement. This was designed specifically as a political protest against a policy seen by the creator (and many public commentators) as absurd.

On top of this we have the endless string of memes created using free online tools which take photos of politicians and adds text to make a political point. These are then shared widely on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other platforms.

And, more disturbingly, we've recently seen hackers take down a stock exchange and call on the nation's president to take action on a given matter under threat of having confidential financial data released publicly. Where did this last form of political protest occur? In Syria - a country not known as a bastion of democracy.

Similarly striking into illegal behaviour, we've recently seen the use of a phony bomb threat tweet to disrupt the flight of a Sony Executive as part of a protest against Sony's corporate behaviour.

Online political expression is evolving quickly, with new approaches emerging frequently and proliferating widely, if they work, or dying away when they don't.

The old view that people would get out on the street and protest if they were really unhappy is no longer supported by the evidence - and the notion that online activism is simply 'slacktivism' and doesn't represent significant numbers or strong views is equally no longer supportable.

Governments - both politically and administratively - need to build their understanding of modern approaches to political engagement and learn how to use and defuse them (as appropriate) to serve their own ends.

Otherwise there are real and growing risks that a government or public agency will be severely damaged or brought down through online political avenues - channels that they weren't effectively monitoring, didn't hold in high regard and catastrophically undervalued.

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Why should governments continue to control voting systems and processes?

Having centralised systems for voting is the standard approach for countries around the world.

In most places it is simply accepted that the government funds the system for election and referendum voting - funding the polling places, ballot boxes, officials and vote counting systems, whether this be directly or at arms length via a body independent of government, but reliant on government funding.

And let's face it, voting is integral to governance. Voting provides legitimacy to a country's government, providing some form of mandate for a ruling party and ensuring that populations are satisfied with a given set of representatives by giving them a role in choosing them.

Looking at it cynically, having governments control voting could be seen as a conflict of interest - the politicians with an interest in re-election both create the electoral laws and fund the system for casting ballots.

Indeed in some parts of the world systematic electoral fraud is a major concern - the government can influence elections outcomes by changing the legal requirements for voting, adjusting electoral boundaries, place onerous condition on forming or operating new parties or on standing for election, limit electoral donations or advertising by opposition parties, or restricting physical access to ballot boxes.

That's before getting to issues with who votes, how many times and how the votes are counted.

In countries where there's substantial trust in governance and the electoral system these issues are generally small-scale, though ever present as we continue to see with voter identification laws introduced in some US states, major parties voting themselves more electoral funding (as Australia's two major parties tried to do in 2013) and individual examples of bad practice by candidates across all democracies.

In places where democracy is fragile and institutions are weak these issues are magnified, and various systems have been developed to keep elections honest - independent observers are often involved (where allowed) to scrutinise an electoral process; citizens and activist groups have photographed and published issues at ballot boxes online via mobile devices, first in ad hoc ways and then via map-based reporting systems such as Ushahidi; entire websites dedicated to exposing electoral fraud and bad practice have popped up around the world.

These systems have often migrated back to established democracies, for example, the mobile phone tool used to scrutinise the 2007 Kenyan elections was reused in the US Presidential race in 2008, demonstrating that in sustaining freedom to vote, eternal vigilance remains important.

However these are simply systems to scrutinise how governments run elections, rather than independent voting processes. They watch and report what happens in electoral systems, but don't seek to replace these systems directly.

Switzerland is perhaps unique in that it has an entrenched system of direct democracy which allows citizens to overrule parliament through a plebiscite vote - but even then the electoral process is funded and managed by the state.

More recently we've seen pseudo-electoral systems emerge - online petition systems like Change.org, which is having a material impact on government decisions. We've also seen systems that allow citizens to put forward laws to parliaments using banking details to validate individual supports (voters) for a given legislative proposal.

Governments broadly keep these systems at arms length, retaining the discretion to ignore these votes where they choose, for whatever reason they see fit - and fair enough, these systems are often flawed electorally, representing specific groups, can be prone to some level of gaming and don't have the same level of scrutiny as a formal government-run electoral process.

However the technology now exists for this to change - and it already is, beginning in Hong Kong.

In June this year two legislative steps by China were seen in Hong Kong to weaken the 'One country, Two system' approach that the city had been operating under since reunification with China.

As a result academics and citizens of Hong Kong started the ‘Occupy Central with Love and Peace’ campaign, which involved the non-violent occupation of the main business district of the city with the goal of achieving universal suffrage for voting in time for the 2017 election of the next Hong Kong Chief Executive.

Attached to this process was an unofficial city referendum which took place from June 20th – June 29th 2014. The poll asked two simple questions: which proposal for universal suffrage would you like to see implemented in Hong Kong and should the legislative council adopts an universal suffrage system if it does not abide with the international definition?

This was held outside (and without the support) of Hong Kong's government by citizens, involving online, mobile and physical voting at 20 'pop-up' polling booths set up across the city, with all Hong Kong residents aged over 18 eligible to vote.

While there were official efforts to prevent the referendum, including a large scale attack on the referendum website, the confiscation of voting boxes by Chinese officials and censorship of mentions of the referendum online by Chinese authorities, these did not prevent large scale voting by citizens.

At the end of the ten day process, 798,000 residents had voted - over 20 per cent of the eligible population. Most had voted via the mobile apps, with the second most popular way being online.

Despite the turnout, the Hong Kong government took the view that civil referendums had no legal standing under Hong Kong law, and therefore the result could be ignored.

This led to the largest public protest in Hong Kong since 2003, with over 500,000 people taking to the streets on July 1st 2014.

A good article detailing the process in detail is at Free Speech Debate, as Vote for Hong Kong – on the streets and online.

This type of unofficial civil referendum, where citizens get together to develop robust electoral systems and use them to state a view to a government, is possible today in much of the world.

The notion that voting systems are the province of governments, that only a central jurisdiction can manage a fair national electoral approach, simply no longer holds true.

So while citizens may choose to allow governments to manage these systems, it is feasible to outsource them - on a case-by-case or a permanent basis, detaching electoral processes from the individuals and groups seeking power.

In the future we may see more populations hold their own civil referendums on government policy or on who governs them.

While governments might decry these as illegitimate, as they are not covered within the laws that parliaments have created, these civil electoral processes may indeed be more legitimate in the long run - as the voting process and system are not designed or modified at the whim of those who hold power.

Indeed it will be interesting to see how the government of an advanced democracy reacts in the face of a civil referendum. Even if they deny the legitimacy of the process, they may find it hard to ignore the democratic backlash.

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Indonesia's 'People's Cabinet' is one of the most innovative uses of Gov 2.0 in the Asia-Pacific region

In Australia roughly 90% of us use the internet, whereas in Indonesia only around 42% of the population do - which still means that roughly 75 million Indonesians are online, or roughly four times the number of Australians that use the internet.

In fact Indonesia was ranked in 2013 as the fourth largest nation of Facebook users in the world, with 63 million users. This is behind the US with 147 million users, India with 115 million and Brazil with 69 million.

Where does Australia rank for Facebook use? We don't make the top twelve.

Even back in 2012 Indonesia was the fifth largest nation on Twitter by number of accounts and Jakarta was known as the Twitter capital of the world, sending more tweets per day than Tokyo, London, Manchester or New York.

With that level of social media usage, and as 44% of Indonesian voters were aged under 25, meaning that social media was the natural way for them to politically engage,  it's no surprise that the recent election campaign in Indonesia saw some highly innovative use of social media.

After the election the Indonesian President-elect had to decide on his cabinet.

Historically this is a behind-the-doors process, where the President and his advisors consider different candidates, sound them out and then announce the cabinet to the public as a 'done deal'.

Australia follows a similar model when the Prime Minister decides on his Cabinet Ministers (with the difference that they must be elected members of parliament). The decision is made behind closed doors, with some media and community speculation but no public engagement.

President-elect Jokoni, however, decided to follow a different model. He crowdsourced his cabinet.

Rather than making the selection a closed process, his team created and promoted a Google Survey where they identified three candidates for each of the 34 Cabinet positions and asked the Indonesian public to vote for which candidate they thought was most appropriate for the role.

If citizens didn't like any of the candidates, they even had the option to suggest their own.

The form specified that the President would ultimately decide which candidate was right for which role (fair enough), but the public did get the right to have a say.

You can see the original Google Form here (and at left translated), although the process has now closed.

It has now been moved and is live instead at eSurv: http://esurv.org/online-survey.php?surveyID=LKKJLO_6dcc89ce (translated image at left).

As of last week, over 18,000 people had given their views on which candidates they preferred for each role.

What influence did the public have over these choices? It's too early to say. However the approach adds a new level of engagement and transparency to the Cabinet selection process.

Could Australia do this type of thing? Well actually I've created a tool to do this, though it hasn't been used in an actual election as yet (keep your eyes open).

More importantly - would Australian governments do this type of thing? Have a Premier or Prime Minister give up some level of decision control in return for improved engagement and insights into public views?

Whether or not the current crop of politicians see the benefits, the next group probably will.

Hopefully they'll also be more willing to look beyond the anglosphere at some of the most innovative use of Gov 2.0 going on in elsewhere in the world, particulary in our neighbours.

As Professor David Hill of Murdoch University told The Citizen about Indonesia's attempt to crowdsource a cabinet, “This is a highly technologically-engaged electorate and there’s a lot that Australian political parties could learn from their Indonesian counterparts.”

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What happens to governments when the trust disappears?

It's difficult for governments to remain effective when the support of citizens evaporates. History is littered with failed states, civil wars and insurrections resulting from society's loss of trust in their rulers and governance systems.

In authoritarian states this support is often built on fear, coercion and control, which can prove to be very fragile when citizens lose their fear of a government, as Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria have most recently demonstrated.

Whereas in democratic states support is given willingly based on a covenant that governments will do the best for all in society and citizens will follow laws on the basis that they are applied equally. When these covenants break down, they tends to do so more gradually and over a longer period of time, with a gradual loss of support as governments become more selective in who they govern for and institutions are eroded through partisan appointments, corruption and budget cuts.

However the end result can be similar, as Thailand, Zimbabwe, Somalia and Fiji have demonstrated, with civil war, authoritarian takeovers or societies completely breaking down.

It can take much time for societies to recover from these breakdowns, with economic loss, insecurity and often deaths before a state regains its feet.

Right now we appear to be living in a time of low trust in governments and many institutions, including public services around the world.

Globally the Edelman Trust barometer for 2014 recorded a 4% decline in overall trust in government from 2013 to 2014 (refer slide 23 in the deck) - with particular falls in the US, France and Hong Kong.

This has also been documented in US studies, where trust in the Senate is at only 7%, at 29% for their House of Representatives, and trust in the President's office in decline.

Australia saw an increase year-on-year in the Edelman Trust Barometer, however this wasn't evident in the latest Essential Report (1 July), which roughly annually assesses people's views of government and different institutions.

With an error of +/- 3% at a 95% confidence interval, the survey suggested that 31% of citizens trusted the Commonwealth Public Service, 25% trusted the Federal Parliament and only 12% trusted political parties.

Local councils did marginally better than any of the above groups at 33% trust. State governments were more trusted again at 39% (Queensland) up to 54% (NSW).

Also according to Essential, only 31% of people trusted the government to responsibly use any information collected and held about them.

Now these are numbers in isolation, what's more interesting is a trend over time.

Unfortunately Essential has only been polling on these topics for a few years - with some institutions (such as local councils) only starting last year, so it's hard to form an impression as to whether trust is increasing or decreasing in the longer-term, though many have seen short term declines in the last year.

Of particular note is the decline in trust in the Commonwealth Public Service, which has plummeted from 49% in 2011 to only 31% in 2014.

This is a 50% decline in only four years and should worry all senior public servants.

A lack of trust can lead to difficulties in sourcing information for policy creation, in getting the right people to contribute to shaping policies and can raise difficulties in implementing programs as communities ignore or distrust communications from the government.

Adjunct to this is the low ongoing trust in political parties, which has probably contributed to the high number of independents and minor parties elected in the last two federal elections. In fact a quarter of the seats in the current Senate are held by non-major parties, the highest proportion in our history.

This also contributes to difficulties in passing laws (as we're seeing already) and can lead to parliamentary paralysis. While the government of the day does have the ability to request a double dissolution election with the right trigger (which is already in place), its unlikely a government will do this unless they believe they can improve their position, which isn't the case right now according to opinion polls, and based on the trend appears to be getting less likely by the week.

Total trust	2014	2013	2012	2011
The High Court	57%	74%	60%	72%
The ABC	54%	70%	54%	46%
The Reserve Bank	52%	64%	49%	67%
Your local council	31%	38%
The Commonwealth Public Service	31%	35%	30%	49%
Federal Parliament	25%	31%	22%	55%
State Parliament	24%	28%
Political parties	13%	12%	12%

At the same time we've seen a change in how Australians perceive democracy as a form of governance, with New Matilda recently covering Lowy research which suggests that, "Democracy No Longer On The Nation's Radar".

The research has been conducted for ten years and has shown a growing disillusionment with democracy in Australia. As reported by New Matilda,

"only 60 per cent of the Australians Lowy surveyed believed that “Democracy is preferable to any other kind of government”. By contrast, 24 per cent of Australians held the opinion that “In some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable.” Another 13 per cent felt that “For someone like me, it doesn’t matter what kind of government we have”

For Generation Y respondents the figures were even more striking, with only 42% of respondents preferring democracy.

While these levels of trust in our system, politicians and public service are not yet critical, they are definitely concerning and need to be understood, monitored and causes addressed appropriately.

That leads to the next point - the causes of low trust in Australia and around the world.

I've blogged previously about how the internet is a contributing factor to this trust issue. People are able to rapidly share information, expose falsehoods and politically and socially organise more rapidly than ever before, and this has a material impact on how nations conduct their affairs.

I don't think many governments have yet internalised the impact of the internet on their political and governance behaviour, and this is costing them respect, lost time and effort.

The push for open government, which has stalled in Australian political circles (even going backwards in some areas in the last year), is a reaction to governments seeking to control information flows, even online, and generally failing due to failures to adjust their culture, regulations and behaviours to operate effectively in a digital society.

More openness is good for governments - provided they have thick skins, are prepared to accept criticism and are equal to the task of transforming both political and governance institutions into more engaging and effective communicators.

Without this transformation, governments are increasingly scoring own goals - damaging their political and governance credibility through secretive decision-making processes and decisions that are either or both poorly conceived and poorly communicated.

The 2014 Budget is a case in point - the government followed an 'old school' approach to leaking and preparing the public and then did the normal TV, radio and in-person select appearances to 'sell' it to citizens. However there was no real attempt to engage citizens online, through the social channels where the public were forming and hardening their views even before Ministerial media releases were published in newsprint.

Unfortunately we're still seeing the same behaviour repeated again and again - with government Ministers and agencies attempting to shutdown conversations they don't want by refusing to speak, an old-school approach which is based around government being the main source of information. Now, however, the community is willing to fill the gaps, so these conversations simply don't end - leaving government looking increasingly silly and ineffectual as the only silent group in the room.

This behaviour will contribute to further erosion of trust in institutions, and government agencies who do it to protect their Ministers are having the exact opposite effect - harming Australia's governance system in ways that may prove, over time, to be irreparable.

Governments are also scoring own goals through some of their decisions, which are only damaging the political estate further.

With all of this currently going on I am increasingly worried about the damage being done to Australian democracy and wonder whether it will be reversed before we see irreversal damage or the demise of one, or both, of our major political parties.

Through all of this I hope that the integrity and performance of the public service, recently rated one of the best in the world, is sustained, so that Australia will have the governance structures, expertise and dedication to rebuild trust in the systems we rely on to remain one of the happiest, most secure and wealthiest nations on earth.

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Mirror, mirror - can modern societies survive looking into the internet and seeing their own reflections?

One of the most major challenges for governments and societies around the world today is the rapidly declining trust in politicians, institutions and governance systems.

I'm willing to make the claim that politicians today are no more corrupt, self-serving or beholden to special interests than politicians were fifty, a hundred or even a thousand years ago.

Regardless of the political system in place, it takes hard work, compromise, negotiation and a willingness to be pragmatic and flexible in one's values and ethics to achieve high office. Even the cleanest and most ethical politicians have to deal with people with different standards, and must find ways to accommodate diverse views in order to achieve great ends.

I'm also willing to say that it isn't the economic situation. The world has faced huge financial strains in the past, and while governments may rise and fall (as Greece's has done), or constitutions may be redrawn (as in Iceland) the underlying governance systems have rarely changed as a result.

No country changed from a democracy to something else as a result of the GFC, and none changed from 'something else' to a democracy as a result of it either.

Maybe its our institutions - are government agencies, courts, armies and police failing in their jobs?

Well no, to a large degree public services around the world remain highly capable of delivering the services they are required to deliver. Of course there's always room for improvement, and successive governments have changed the configuration and goals of public services - but the core capability remains largely intact, at least to-date.

So what do I believe is causing the rapid decline in trust, potentially the greatest threat facing governments today?

It's the rise of the internet and supporting technologies.

The internet - particularly social media - has become a mirror that society cannot escape.

Every action and decision taken by elected politicians is now almost instantly communicated, critiqued and analysed by thousands or millions of people - many looking for the slightest sign of deviation from a past statement, position or decision.

Websites have sprung up to collate and consider every public political statement - and some of their private ones too. Tools such as Polliwoops ensure that even comments that politicians later delete remain accessible - Google's cache is another way to find deleted media statements made in a politician's early career, and even government-funded platforms such as PANDORA are repositories of deleted Prime Ministerial speeches (removed so as not to 'confuse' voters).

Old-school politicians, who chameleon-like reflect the views of the physical audience in front of them, are potentially finding instant mass communication the greatest challenge. Gone are the days where a politicians could travel from event to event, each time subtly adjusting their message to appeal to the audience at hand.

Now every inconsistency, weasel word, off-the-cuff remark and error of judgement by elected politicians (as well as many unelected ones and public figures) is captured, shared and discussed online.

And that's just the facts - the internet is also full of commentary, predictions, suppositions and lies about political leaders, some benign, some actively trying to understand or help and some trying to bring them down.

The problem isn't that our politicians are flawed, our economies failing and our institutions corrupt - many countries have been there before and survived, even thrived.

The problem is that society is now seeing both truth and fiction in greater quantity and detail than ever before - the mirror of the internet is always on, and no society can choose to look away from it.

It is easier to believe politicians when all we see are the good things they do. It is easier to believe in a system of government when we don't think about the deals done to support it.

However people today now expect some form of purity from their political leaders that has never been achieved in history - they want leaders better than they are, without flaws, with no need to compromise and who appear mystically in a leadership role without years of learning their craft and making mistakes on the way.

How would the political leaders of the past have been effective in today's mirror society?

Would any of them successfully been able to face the mirror without flinching?

Can any aspiring political leaders now make it into parliament without casting a mixed reflection?

Even a political leader who is pure and uncompromised in every way will find that hostile elements - rivals, other parties, lobby groups, disruptive citizens - attempt to distort their reflection into a funhouse caricature that the public reject.

I wonder whether our system of government can survive the relentless focus of this mirror. Whether we'll attract competent politicians, see ongoing mass civil disobedience or simply lose all trust and faith in the people who put themselves forward to be elected and the system they are elected into.

Will we learn to accept that all political systems, their institutions, leaders and decisions, are flawed under sufficient scrutiny. That everyone has something they're not proud of, or can be distorted into inappropriateness, in their past, and accept that our leaders and system are what they are - faults and all?

Will we demand systemic change - that our electoral systems are reformed and the people inhabiting the current system be removed, possibly even tried?

Or will we simply opt-out. Treat politics and our governments as an annoyance that we evade wherever possible and only engage when we have to - leaving us at the mercy of politicians who choose to use their powers for actions not in the interest of the public?

I really don't know which course will be taken in many countries around the world, but I do expect to see many more governments fall over the next twenty years, hollowed out through loss of talent and put into the hands of petty tyrants, or collapsing under their own weight.

However what I hope to see are governments and societies finding ways to truly look at themselves in the mirror. To rationalise that while they can no longer persist with the myth that they are the 'finest of them all' they're actually not that bad looking - despite the wrinkles and scars.

I also hope to see governments recognise that they need to experiment more at the core, not simply around the edges - reverse trends towards political functionaries being the majority of elected members and institute practices which turn parliaments back into the servants of their societies, rather than their masters.

This will take real political courage and will to change.

Ironically political courage may be one thing that increases as the as the mirror's reflections become more and more defined.

Soon anyone seeking to enter politics will need to have courage simply to put themselves forward for election, because if there is a single blemish on their reflection they will be hounded relentlessly.

Standing up to that scrutiny, displeasure, disappointment and abuse in order to make a difference through public office will take enormous public courage.

Ultimately, however, societies will need to find a new accommodations. We will need to accept that there's as many pure politicians as there are unicorns, and when we look into the mirror of the internet the reflection we see isn't solely that of the politicians we elect, it is a reflection of our entire society and the choices we have made to create it.

If we want to feel something other than disappointment or horror when we look at our reflection, our society's reflection, in the internet, then we will have to consciously, personally and collectively, make the decisions that will allow us to gaze on it with pride.

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