Thursday, October 17, 2013

More data transparency and accessibility

More praise from me for the Minister of Social Development's initiatives to improve the accessibility and transparency of benefit data.

The new format benefit factsheets have just been released. This was necessitated by the change in benefit categories. What impresses me however is 1/ the publication of numerous data spreadsheets showing regional, territorial authority, Auckland board etc information. Some of this has been available previously but to gather it into a table required hours of work trawling through individual factsheets. The Ministry has just made my job much easier. And 2/ the new factsheets have estimated back-data which will enable trends to be tracked from 2008. As well the historic data enabling tracking back to 1999 has been retained.

To use a hackneyed sporting term , this government, by setting public service goals and  making the data that measures their success more transparent and accessible, has actually 'backed itself.'

Naturally, I have to end with the observation that they can and must go further (before I get it in the neck from small government individualists.)


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