Government's FOI reform legislation passed through the Parliament

The Government's FOI reform legislation, the Australian Information Commissioner Bill 2010 and the Freedom of Information Amendment (Reform) Bill 2010, passed through the Parliament on 13 May 2010.

The Government moved amendments to both Bills in the House of Representatives on 12 May, which were agreed. Details of those amendments and the final Bills as passed by both Houses are available from the Parliament of Australia ParlInfo website: see

Australian Information Commissioner Bill 2010 http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbillhome%2Fr4164%22

and Freedom of Information Amendment (Reform) Bill 2010 http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbillhome%2Fr4163%22

Following Royal Assent of the Bills, the majority of the measures (including the establishment of the new Office of the Australian Information Commissioner) will commence on a day to be fixed by proclamation, or six months after Royal Assent. The Government will make an announcement on this matter.

As you may be aware, the Government announced on 26 February this year the engagement of Professor John McMillan AO as the Information Commissioner Designate. Preparations for the establishment of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner are continuing. This includes work on new FOI guidelines so that they are ready in sufficient time for commencement of the changes to the FOI request regime.

The new Information Publication Scheme will commence six months later than the other reform measures.

New Report: “Net Generation” Guide Released by U.S. Department of Defense

The U.S. Department of Defense announced the release of the Net Generation guide, a 128-page report by the Federal Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council that focuses on preparing for change in the Federal Information Technology (IT) workforce.

Although this report focuses on workplace and IT issues, two chapters might be of interest.

+ Chapter 5 Norms and Characteristics of the Net Generation (Begins on Page 37)

+ Chapter 9 Shaping the Workplace Through Web 2.0 Technologies (Begins on Page 63)

Full Text access to the 128 page document can be found here (PDF).

Source: U.S. DOD

The future of IRIS industrial relations database

As a result of the changes to the industrial relations system, information about employment and industrial relations will be available from Fair Work Australia.

Historical data in the IRIS database will be relocated to the QIRC website and available for free from 1 July 2010

More information from Wageline

Commonwealth Budget process explained

It's Budget night tomorrow (Tuesday 11 May). Do you know enough to answer any questions from your clients? Will you be able to source relevant documents? Do you understand the role of the Estimates committees? If you're a bit rusty, you may find this document rivetting reading!

Roy Jordan, ALLA member and Senior Law Librarian at the Parliamentary Library posted about this useful document on the national ALLA-ANZ list : The Commonwealth Budget: Process and Presentation [PDF]

It contains an overview of the process, the main stages, budget documents and even reporting requirements. A great primer!

Government response to Gov 2.0 Taskforce report

The Government response to the Government 2.0 Taskforce report Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0 has been released.

The Government has agreed to most of the recommendations from the report, deferring or questioning a few. As in the U.S they will adopt a "declaration of open government" and the Department of Finance and Deregulation will be the lead agency ( their new blog AGIMO will be providing a forum for issues surrounding Government use of ICT, well worth a look).

Implementation of the recommendations hinges on some other factors and is related to the passage of the freedom of information legislation currently before parliament, so will take at least 18 months to become a reality. No doubt this direction will continue to provide law librarians with challenges as well as opportunities in accessing government information in the future.

April CPD event cancelled

Due to low attendance numbers, this event at the University of Qld has been cancelled.

Next event coming in May!

Delay in production of Qld Legislation bound volumes 2009

Helen Gambley reports that there has been a delay in the production of the 2009 Queensland Acts As Passed Bound volumes.

Due to Franklin Book Binders closing down, SDS Publications have had to find new binders so it has taken longer than usual.

They should hopefully be with everyone within the next 4 to 5 days.

April CPD event - an update on Web 2.0 tools

Looking forward to the ALLAQ April CPD event - an update on Web 2.0 tools

RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, twitter, podcasts.

Date: 29th April

Time: 5-6pm

Where: Social Sciences & Humanities Library (UQ)Travel:

City Cat leaves from the Riverside Centre at 4.09pm or 4.22pm.

This is a link to the UQ Social Sciences Library so that you can find your way. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/ssah/#location

Following the session we can adjourn to the Pizza Cafe for drinks and pizza at your own expense.

Please RSVP to allaq.cpd@gmail.com by the 27th April 2010.

This event is open to all ALLAQ members.

Twitter archives

Google announces that they are already online with a searchable version of the new Twitter archive. As of today, the Google’s Twitter archive only goes back a few months to February, 2010 but “eventually” the entire archive back to day one would be available and searchable.

See article - The Twitter Archives from the Library of Congress & Google: The Facts As We Know Them

Govt agencies move on social media policy

Federal Government departments have revealed they are moving ahead to implement social media policies, despite the government having not yet responded to recommendations in the Government 2.0 Taskforce report.

see full article

Report from Berkeley School of Law comparing Information Privacy Attitudes amongst Young Adults and Older Adults

Information Privacy Attitudes and Policies, How Different are Young Adults from Older Adults

Many commentators claim that young people “are less concerned with maintaining privacy than older people are.” Surprisingly, though, few empirical investigations have explored the privacy attitudes of young adults. This report is among the first quantitative studies evaluating young adults’ attitudes. It demonstrates that the picture is more nuanced than portrayed in the popular media.

A gap in privacy knowledge provides one explanation for the apparent license with which the young behave online.

Get member rates at ALIA events

Thanks to the memorandum of understanding signed with ALIA, our members now get member rates to ALIA conferences and events.

The program for ALIA Access 2010 conference 1-3 September is shaping up to be really exciting. Find out more by signing up to receive regular updates. Registration opens 1 April.

BIALL Scholarship announced!

How would you like $A3000 towards travel and accommodation costs to attend the BIALL Conference ?

This scholarship, generously sponsored by Justis, is a great professional development opportunity, offered only to ALLA members.

The British & Irish Association of Law Librarians conference "Risks and Opportunities" will be held in Brighton, UK in June 2010. The conference program is highly relevant to Australian law librarians, including such topics as alternate models for managing information resources in law firms, outsourcing, and managing online library spend. Previous scholarship winners have reported that this is very worthwhile.

Applications close soon (12 April) so if you're interested, get yourself to the Scholarships page on the ALLA website to find out the selection criteria and how to apply.

CCHatter - keep up to date with CCH

To keep up to date with Intelliconnect developments, check out CCH's blog Cchatter .

This is where they release information about feature updates - like the recent inclusion of source details in the title of each search result, and the new "print for court" capability.

Not a lot of content there at the moment, but it does look promising and certainly worth adding to your RSS reader.

Podcast: RTI Act CPD event

Podcast of the Right to Information Act CPD event held 8 March 2010.

Podcast: QCAT CPD Event

Podcast of the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) CPD event held 17 February 2010.

Podcast: National Model Discussion

Podcast of the discussion on the Proposed National Constitution for the Australian Law Librarians' Association, held 28 January 2010.

data.australia.gov.au

http://data.australia.gov.au/
data.australia.gov.au is the home of Australian government public information datasets. Currently in beta.

"The australia.gov.au search is a fast, current and comprehensivefull-text search service with access to over 4 million resources fromover 900 Australian Government sites as well as State and TerritoryGovernment sites."

It also has a RSS feed capabilityhttp://australia.gov.au/news-and-media/media-release-rss-feeds

Alerting services

Recently there was a product launched called FeedWatch, with combines RSS with InterAction (widely used as a client management system by lawfirms) - http://fellsoft.com/feedwatch.aspx

Moreover has been around for a while, but is now utilising Open Calais to create feeds on topics - http://w.moreover.com/

Ideas for CPD activities

Tell us what CPD activities you would like.

Email: allaq.cpe@gmail.com or add a comment to this post.

What would you like training in?
What training can you offer?
Who would you like as a speaker?
what subject areas interest you?