While Auckland City councillors have been busy hiring security guards to keep the suspicious out of public meetings, the bureaucrats have been busy letting us in through the backdoor.
Electronically that is.
At last, all the juicy details from meeting agendas have gone online, providing ratepayers with the official reports and background papers used by councillors in their decision-making.
It's a step forward that's been a long time coming.
Local government has been slow to take advantage of the internet revolution. While stumbling over each other in the race to attract private e-business firms into their so-called "wired cities", councils have been slow to take advantage of the communications revolution as a tool for better democracy.
For years the politicians have had the chance to get their message directly to the people without it being filtered through the hands of we journalists. But if they disliked us, it was as though they distrusted the public just as much. Information was power and they wanted to keep both to themselves. That's how it seemed, anyway.
Towards the end of last year a change of direction slipped onto the scene. Both Auckland City and Waitakere City expanded their websites to include not just the council agendas and minutes, but the key background attachments as well.
It mightn't sound exciting, but for anyone monitoring the democratic process - or wanting to play an informed part in it - it was a major breakthrough.
The attachments are the meat in the democratic process. They include the applicants' submissions and the expert reports which form the basis on which councillors make decisions. They are also the documents which an alert citizen can use to keep track of what's going on and, if so moved, either for or against, jump up and down about.
For some strange reason, neither council felt the need to blow their own trumpet about this pathfinding. Or if they did, it wasn't loud enough for me to hear. So I'll do it for them.
The fun in browsing through these reports is finding the unexpected. Of course I couldn't resist a peek at what Auckland City's ludicrous Law and Order Committee is up to.
It turns out a major task of this new committee has been to try to con the media into believing it is doing a good job.
There's even a report entitled "Effectiveness of Media Coverage on Law and Order issues." "The committee," begins the report, "was set up to assist in implementing the mayor's initiatives in this area. One of the first initiatives was to obtain 'good news' stories from the police for publication in suburban newspapers."
And here was I thinking the committee had been set up to stamp out crime.
The only reports absent from Auckland City's site are those dealing with planning applications, which is a major gap. Steve McDowell, manager of democracy services, says it's a problem of size, with some planning agendas weighing in with several hundred pages of attachments.
With planning issues attracting more debate than just about any other, let's hope they find a way of accommodating these applications. Mr McDowell says he's working on it.
On Waitakere City's site, they not only have the agendas, they also have a special shrine to Mayor Bob Harvey. Here we can find a 78-page report from chairman Bob on a sister-city jaunt to the Emerald Isles entitled "An Irish Partnership for Waitakere". Alongside are his musings on, among other things, the recent election.
On another page is Mayor Bob reclining on an iron bedstead on Piha Beach alongside lists of his favourite books and music and the like.
I never put him down as a classical music buff, but here he is topping his list with three works by Sir Edward Elgar. Then comes an unknown called "Edvard". A local Westie talent perhaps? Looking more closely you see that Edvard wrote "Greig piano concerto" and "Greig cello sonata". An inputting blooper, no doubt.
By the time you get to his favourite websites the earnestness is getting a bit much. Top of his list is "UN Commission on Sustainable Development". Sure Bob. Given his conspiracy theories about how former prime minister Norman Kirk met his end, I'm surprised the CIA site is nowhere to be seen.
Getting back to Waitakere's agendas, a major triumph for democracy is the listing beside each item of the name and phone extension of the council official involved. Upset about plans to close the vandalised Henderson park toilets for a month? Then call Alan ... I'll give him a break and leave out his name and number. But as democracy goes, what a major breakthrough to have a name attached to a problem.
Other online services are a bit hit-and-miss. You can pay bills electronically through the Auckland City site, but other transactions still seem to require a stamp or a trip to town. Though, as with Waitakere, an assortment of forms can be downloaded.
Both sites have a way to go before you could declare them electronic democracy in action, but they're heading in the right direction.
And they're streets ahead of any other New Zealand council site I could find.
Auckland City Council
Waitakere City Council
<i>Brian Rudman:</i> Fingertip information forward step by councils
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