Consultation

The second recommendation contains a self contradiction: it recommends that an existing agency should be appointed lead agency, but does not say which and the proposes coordination amongst a long shopping list of agencies.

The report is an unfortunate combination of hard to read bureaucratic writing and hard to read web formatting. The task force needs to work out on exactly what it is trying to say and then say it, briefly and clearly. The ANU has asked me to prepare a course on “Electronic Data Management” (COMP7420 ) for servants in 2010 addressing many of these issues.

Each recommendation has been summarised. However, each reads as if it was a summary of all the recommendations. I suggest the report have one simple summary of recommendations, not one summary for each recommendation.

The note in brackets can be omitted , as it seems to be saying that the summary is a summary, which is a tautology and that for details you need to see the document the summary was prepared from (which is another tautology).

The esoteric heading “What’s in a name?” and discussion of the meaning of the word word “engage” is not useful. The report would be better with a clear and direct statement about the purpose of the report and the main recommendations.