(Open Letter to the Speaker of the New Zealand Parliament)
On 11 February 2013 I received an email
alert from Parliament’s website, stating that the deadline for
submissions to the Justice and Electoral Committee on the Family Court
Procedure Reform Bill was 13 February 2013 – just two days later.
I dashed off a quick submission, in which I complained about the short
notice that I had received.
On 25 February 2013 I spoke to someone called Jonathan in Parliament’s
IT section. I had been put onto the IT section by the staff at the Justice
and Electoral Committee. Jonathan never got back to me, so I kept ringing
the IT section over the next few days. I spoke to someone called Sam
and gave him my email address and phone number. I spoke to Jonathan
again and was asked to send in a copy of the email alert which I had
received to the email address ict.servicedesk@parliament.govt.nz (Attention:
Jonathan), and I did that.
The email alert was sent to zohrab@paradise.net.nz , which is one
of my email addresses, although I prefer to use peter@zohrab.name ,
which some websites do not accept as being a valid email address.
On 12 March 2013, I spoke to someone called Logan in the IT section,
and he said he would get Jonathan to email me and tell me when I could
expect an answer. However, he never emailed me (unless the email got
lost).
On 13 March 2013 I emailed the same complaint to the parliamentary
website’s Website Administrator, but received no reply.
On 20 March 2013, I spoke to a manager in the Office of the Clerk,
a Mr. Williams, who indicated that there were other ways of finding
out what Bills were open for submissions. That is true, but if Parliament
provides email alerts, that is obviously a great time-saver –
but it should not be provided if it does not work. He said he would
get back to me – but he did not.
I consider that some unprofessional behavior has been going on: first,
some interference with the email alert service for political reasons;
and, secondly, a cover-up by members of your staff.
I would appreciate it if the highest democratic
institution in the land were to demonstrate some transparency and accountability
in this matter.
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