In tax, the government often specifically instructs the taxboard to look at only the extent to which the legislation has worked according to its own stated rationales (that is why the taxboard is there).

Of course, everyone actually submits on policy questions anyway, which becomes an ‘FYI’ appendix to the report (and is not published) - thus the government gets the benefit of knowing what it should do without having any pressure to actually do any of it. In practice, suprise, the government cherry-picks what it wants.

Hardly best practice for those of us who don’t work on the taxboard or know someone who does!

(Better Practice) Principles for ICT-enabled Citizen Engagement

Better Practice Checklist for Online Policy Consultation.

http://www.getinvolved.qld.gov.au which AGIMO points to as best-of-breed in Oz.

AGIMO also references Promise and Problems of E-Democracy: Challenges of Online Citizen Engagement, 2003, OECD.

Rationale: Allows others to read, and either rebut or make submission incorporating those ideas - or a simple “what s/he said”

Time between referral and opening and final reporting (see the Melbourne Water post a day ago) raises an interesting weirdness for the metric on times between announce and close and report.

Another idea (off top of head) is does it point easily to background material? (e.g. link to the legislation it reviews, ABS reports to prepare for writing, detailed prompts for parts - admittedly none do it yet - apart from that AGIMO consultation last year we both made contributions to).

Hmmm. I’ll get back on this!