GOVERNING.NZ
To rule is easy, to govern difficult
About this site
THIS IS A DRAFT SITE
We propose this domain, governing.nz becomes a site to enable people and communities to connect with their elected officials without the filter of an opaque, unelected, public-sector senior management.
About governing
Open Government is the most effective form of checks and balances.
The idea government should run like businesses fails because there is no simple way, like P&L, to measure how it is doing. In its absence, ask the people affected by regulation to report their unfiltered experiences.
In a democracy, where power depends on the consent of the people governed, transparency of the regulatory process is paramount. Open government lets in the light and allows the public to scrutinise the workings of the law, for better or for worse
When government becomes opaque, it invariably causes a breakdown in the nation – things stop working:
- Government becomes part of the problem, not part of the solution.
- The common wealth diminishes, as a whole the nation becomes poorer and more vulnerable to outside exploitation
- Society polarises into haves and have nots – a comfortable class and a struggling class, where…
- Within a generation, the struggling class spawns a predator class
- A free and open democracy turn into an autocratic bureaucracy.
Sound familiar? It’s happening now in NZ. Opaque government is like rust – it never stops, can never be eliminated, but must be subject to constant pushback. The pushback for this ongojng degradation is open government where at a granular level, regulations are subject to a functional system of ongoing and rigorous checks and balances.
In open government, in addition to their role as lawmakers and setters of high-level policy, elected officials provide constituency services, where the people do not just make submissions the bureaucracy can accept or deflect, but make specific complaints to their elected officials – local to their MP and global to the governing list party(s). The officials have the power of granular enquiry and within a system of checks and balances, to call for regulatory change and reform of regulatory ministries, departments, agencies or other arms of central and local government that act in an opaque manner.
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