Government libraries essential for an effective public sector

The ALIA submission to Advisory Group on Reform of Australian Government Administration is now online. See http://www.alia.org.au/advocacy/submissions/reform.ausgov.html

Government information helps to educate people, stimulate progress and solve complex economic, scientific and social problems. With many new technologies, however, government information has expanded so quickly that basic principles regarding its creation, use and dissemination are in danger of being neglected and even forgotten.

This submission highlights three major issues:

• the importance of libraries and information centres in assisting high quality policy advice and service delivery,
• the need for whole of government approaches to information for an efficient and effective public service and
• the need to make government information widely available with web 2.0 technology to enable a high level of citizen participation in policy development a service delivery.