YOUR 'TWO BOBS WORTH'
ITS JOURNEY THROUGH A BUREAUCRACY

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James Aston

Figure 1. Information hierarchy

Have you ever wondered where your input ends up in a Government Agency? Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't necessarily fall into a black hole. There is a light at the end of the tunnel! In this article, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (the Authority) is used as a case study to illuminate how information progresses from one point to the next and ultimately contributes to the decision-making process within a small government agency.

The demands for information are different across the different sections of the Authority. For example, the assessment of impacts from major commercial developments requires sufficient detail about the design, construction and operation of a proposed development in order to initiate monitoring programs and other actions that the operator will need to take to identify and minimise any unacceptable impacts to the coral reef environment. Information for environmental impact assessment of a particular project tends to focus on a particular site within a short, defined time period.

Similarly, the initial phase of the management planning process requires the identification of issues of concern (usually over a large area and long time-frame), and the gathering of the best available information on the area's resources, and use of those resources, so that sustainable use practises can be established. It involves as much participation and consultation with all visitor and interest groups, as is necessary and practical, to bring their knowledge and cooperation into the process (GBRMPA 1993). The aim is to reduce the degree of uncertainty in decision making as much as possible within the available resources. In the past, the planner has only had time to prepare simple descriptions of the physical, biological and socio-economic characteristics of an area. These descriptions can be expanded upon so that an area is described not just on a site by site basis but in terms of the significance to world heritage area 'values'.

Within each of the sections of the Authority, staff deal with information at different levels and in a variety of formats in order to advance that information within the organisation. For example, an assistant project officer will generally be responsible for pre-processing raw data. This step may involve entering raw data on a database. A common step is to have the data organised by a computer specialist. The computer specialist may also develop a user friendly interface for the dataset. In the Authority the corporate database management system is Oracle, a relational database management system. Oracle Forms is often used as an interface to the data although software programs such as Microsoft Access and Q&E are also increasingly being used.

The pre-processed data is then given to project officers to ensure that it is compact and manageable. The information may be weighted, optimised and summarised to increase its relevance and usefulness to those senior officers who are responsible for preparing policy. Currently, this process is largely subjective but this may change with the expansion of datasets and further development of decision support systems.

If there is a requirement to involve the public in any aspect of a Marine Park management program, the information gathered to date is attractively packaged so it can be quickly absorbed at a glance and easily understood. This is usually the job of graphic designers, publications officers and cartographers, although image processing software has made this task within the reach of any computer-literate person. Advice and input from individuals and groups outside the agency is used within a legislative framework to further develop policies and management practices for the Marine Park.

Often there is a need to instigate new research to help answer particular questions. Research and monitoring staff work with other scientists from private consultancies, universities or other agencies to obtain and interpret information relevant to the understanding of the Great Barrier Reef and implementation of Authority programs, not just 'for the sake of science'. However, there is concern among many scientists that the theoretical foundation and role of pure research is compromised with this approach, since many of humanity's greatest discoveries have occurred by chance rather than by design.

Most research contracts and grants with the Authority stipulate that the relevance of the research project be explained in terms of implications for the planning and management of the Great Barrier Reef. This attempts to capitalise on the researcher's knowledge of the subject as well as bridge the gap between a raw result and what might be useful to management. The decision to fund a research project depends, among other things, on its relevance to current management issues, the power of the design, and the ability of the researcher to successfully carry out the research.

The information needs of the Authority are also stipulated in the Corporate Plan, which outlines the one- and five-year goals and targets for each program area. To date, most research projects have been instigated by staff of the Authority and the emphasis has been on the collection of ecological information as well as on threatening processes and events. Due to resource constraints and methodological limitations, the research tends to be species specific and limited in scale. The enormous degree of spatial and temporal variation within the Great Barrier Reef system generally prevents extrapolation of the findings to other areas, except as anecdotal argument. For this reason, the focus for research is now on acquiring larger scale and longer term datasets.

Sometimes, for any number of reasons, data never makes it to the decision-making stage. For example, the data may have already served its purpose as 'background information' for a larger project. In other cases, differences in the functions of each of the sections of the agency may have resulted in research products being developed which are suitable for making resource management decisions but which are unsuitable for developing management plans. For example, an inventory of coral species on a particular zone of a reef over time will be an integral part of a monitoring program for a commercial operation but of limited use in a planning exercise for a whole reef. On the other hand, the cultural differences between scientists and reef managers may result in new and innovative solutions to old problems.

Outside the Authority, differences in visions and work practices both at an inter-agency, corporate and at an individual level have led to similar problems. Public and non-government groups may also have different objectives, different modes of organisation and operation, different perceptions of reality and different degrees and kinds of power to shape events (Kelleher 1983). Recently, however, many of these differences have been overcome through the development of the 25 Year Strategic Plan for the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and through the formation of the CRC Reef Research Centre.

In the past, the integration of knowledge of the interactions between the users of the reef and the reef as a biological system has been done subjectively in the minds of the policy and decision makers. However, as decision makers increasingly need to deal with greater volumes of information coupled with the drive for greater accountability in the public service, the Authority has developed a Geographic Information System (GIS) with the aim of integrating and manipulating diverse datasets, thus providing quick responses to strategic questions about the resource and use of the resource. The GIS has enabled geo-referenced data to be extrapolated, interpolated, and modelled against other data from elsewhere and the results made available in easily understood forms such as maps, graphs and tables.

While the GIS has offered an integrated perspective, there are some serious hurdles to be overcome before its full potential is realised. Most notable of these is the need for the policy and decision makers to work more closely together with GIS specialists to specify outputs and outcomes, not just in the early stages of project formulation but throughout the life of the project. In some cases this may involve considerable trialing of datasets and database management systems. A logically structured database accompanied by full descriptions of the datasets will help specify the degree of confidence that can be placed on decisions.

As in most other organisations, there is still much that can be done to improve the management of information in the Authority. We need to continue to develop the technology to help us manage information better concurrently with data quality auditing processes. We also need to develop the various levels of expertise to drive the technology not just by one specialist group within the organisation, but right through the organisation. Time needs to be set aside to allow experimentation with the technology and the datasets and to explore the possibilities generated by further manipulation of the data.

Managing information better will mean continually prioritising and updating our information. This process can be achieved by developing and maintaining alliances with all of our 'clients' and implementing processes which facilitate an understanding of client needs. A greater degree of equity would be introduced into government decision-making processes if key non-government organisations, especially Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, were plugged into the Commonwealth government information management network (Auble 1994 and Rakai 1994).

The assessment of information needs is a two-way process and no one party should assume that they understand what the other's needs and wants are. It relies on all players in the process having an understanding of the priorities for the use of information, while realising that information may serve more than one objective. One of the challenges for staff of the Authority is to build on strategic datasets and develop the skills for routine use of those datasets in policy and decision making. This involves providing feedback on the quality of information at each of the levels of the information hierarchy as well as challenging the specifications and utility of the information that is available. It is essential to have the structure, networks and mechanisms in place to enhance this process and ensure information ends up in the right hands. These mechanisms will continue to affect and be affected by the political and organisational climate and culture.

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Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
PO Box 1379 TOWNSVILLE QLD 4810. Phone: (077) 500 700, Fax: (077) 726 093
E-mail: registry@gbrmpa.gov.au