Achieving transparency with blurred government boundaries

All Australian jurisdictions have legislation that aims to strengthen democracy by ensuring that public sector information is broadly available, subject only to a limited number of exemptions. Increasingly, the private and not-for-profit sectors are used to provide services and infrastructure that were traditionally provided by the public sector. This is done through a variety of mechanisms, including various types of public-private partnership as well as through other contracts for services. In this paper, I examine the impact of these changing boundaries on existing measures to achieve accountability and transparency in the delivery of public services and infrastructure. While I focus predominantly on the legislative landscape in Western Australia, many of the issues are equally applicable elsewhere.