Canadians now have an “Open Portal” to an “Open Government’ according to the “doublethink” of Treasury Board President Tony Clement. You get the impression that the Parry Sound-Muskoka Conservative Member of Parliament took his script directly from George Orwell’s 1949 book Nineteen eighty-four. Even a Toronto Star editorial writer referred to the proposal as Orwellian.
It is only when you try the Open Portal site on the Internet that you realize how far from the truth that Mr. Clement has wandered. For anyone experienced in working with computer databases, this site is archaic, out of touch with reality and will satisfy nobodies’ queries. And being directed to download pdf documents related to test queries without knowing their size or content structure can be a terrible waste of time. This portal ignores the present and is confused by the past.
But if you think the “Open Portal” is a joke, Tony Clement’s “Open Government” promises are just plain silly. There would have to be tens of thousands of person years spent on programmers and system designers to start to address what he is proposing. As most of the better systems people have learned: Treasury Board hates fulltime staff but encourages contract employees. The good ones are moving to the contract side these days as the benefits might stink but you can triple your income.
But that is nothing new for our Tony. For the past three years, Clement has been a man on a mission. He was tasked by Stephen Harper to gut the federal government, clean out its brain pan, pull its teeth and make lamb fries of its gonads. In the process during that period, he has reduced the full-time public service by some 25,000 personnel.
It is almost pathetic that Clement would promise easier access on the internet to Canada’s scientific information after his wholesale removal of many government scientists and the effective gagging of the remainder.
It was about 30 years ago that the federal government first set up computerized access to government requests for proposal. That was pre-Internet and it worked. It should work as well today!
And if anyone can decipher what is really happening in government spending, many Members of Parliament and people at the Parliamentary Budget Office would more than appreciate your help.
If you have read Nineteen eighty-four, you know that the only objective of Big Brother and his party was to seek power for its own sake.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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