[Improving Access to Legislation] The IRM researcher repeats the IRM midterm report recommendation. The IRM researcher suggests linking or cooperating with the New Zealand Legal Information Institute site.9 The IRM researcher also recommends inclusion as a milestone in future action plans the Department of Internal Affairs’ future work to explore options for making local authorities’ legislation more accessible to users.
IRM End-of-Term Report (2016-18 NAP)
Inclusion of local governments in future action plans: Strengthen high-quality public media reporting of local government
IRM Design Report 2018-20 NAP
Register of Government's innovation activities
Net Hui 2019
Evaluate government public consultation processes and the impact they have had
Net Hui 2019
Improve access to authoritative government information, e.g. improved readability of government websites - in plain English and plain te reo
Net Hui 2019
Extend the scope of current Commitment 11 [Authoritative dataset of government organisations as open data for greater transparency] to include the structure that organisations use, white spaces and overlaps
Net Hui 2019
Any complex legislative proposal amending existing law result in the release of a marked-up version of the legislation containing the proposed amending provisions to assist potential submitters.
The provision of such marked up material greatly assists submission preparation, allowing submitters’ time to be focused on identifying areas for legislative improvement, thereby also improving productivity by no longer requiring multiple parties considering making submissions to complete similar work marking up legislation.
The Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill is an example where the failure of officials to provide a marked-up version of the Financial Markets Conduct Act led to duplicate work having to be completed by multiple parties that I believe likely impacted upon the submission process to the detriment of obtaining better legislation.
Further, following the passage of the Financial Services Legislation Bill, there is still no easy way of seeing what it will eventually look like, because the Financial Markets Conduct Act will not be updated on the NZ Legislation website until the amended legislation actually comes into force in June 2020, again making it difficult to understand and plan for the change. In this circumstance, I submit that consideration should also be given to providing a version of the legislation containing the new provisions ahead of the provisions actually coming into force, appropriately marked up to ensure that there is no misunderstanding as to what applies when."
Rob Dowler
Cooperation and coordination between agencies on the scheduling of consultations/engagement of interest to civil society.
As an illustration of why this would be useful I’ve included below a table of the public consultation deadlines my small team of currently two needs to meet over your consultation period.
|
Submission |
Date due |
|
Mental health guidelines - MoH |
17 January |
|
Public Service Legislation Bill |
31 January. Oral subs in Feb. |
|
Productivity Commission Future of Work Inquiry |
7 February |
|
Protection of First Responders and Prison Officers Bill |
12 February |
|
MBIE protection of contractors consultation |
14 February |
|
Education and Training Bill |
14 February |
|
Holidays’ Act (Bereavement Leave for Miscarriage) Bill |
14 February |
|
Disability Employment Action Plan |
21 February |
|
Taumata Arowai – the water rights regulator- Bill |
4 March |
|
Infrastructure Funding and Financing Bill |
5 March |
|
Consultation on New Zealand’s next Open Government Partnership Action Plan |
Jan to March |
NZ Public Service Association
To see all ideas that have been submitted see Suggestions for Commitments in the 2020-22 National Action plan