Daniel Vujcich writes:
Today, Croakey reintroduces an old friend.
The Croakey Register of Unreleased Documents (CRUD) was first launched in April 2009 with the goal of recording “the details of evaluations, plans, reviews and other such documents that should be released (whether by governments or other commissioning bodies), in the interests of promoting better informed policy, practice and debate.”
Following a hiatus, CRUD is back with a list of unreleased (or difficult to access) documents that have been cited in major Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing publications this year.
The list will be updated monthly, and publications from state and territory Health Departments and other relevant agencies will also be reviewed.
Croakey readers are invited to suggest documents that they think ought to be made public or more easily accessible, and to help us find those listed on the Register.
The re-launch of the Register is an appropriate time to reflect on and reiterate its value.
CRUD’s guiding philosophy is rooted in Norman Daniels’ call for greater transparency in health policy making processes. In a BMJ article, Daniels writes that “[a] fair process requires publicity about the reasons and rationales that play a part in decisions. There must be no secret where justice is involved, for people should not be expected to accept decisions that affect their well being unless they are aware of the grounds for those decisions.”
What CRUD therefore aims to do is to render the reasons and rationales behind health policy making more transparent. Where a document has been cited as being relevant to a health policy decision, CRUD believes that the document should be easily accessible so that its contents can be analysed, discussed and, where appropriate, used by professional, research, and lay communities.
CRUD encourages government agencies to be proactive in filling the gaps in our health policy making knowledge, in the belief that better informed debates can lead to better policies, and the possibility of a healthier Australia. One way of doing this is to hyperlink all documents cited in official publications; another is to contact CRUD with copies of Register documents that are difficult to locate, or that have not previously been released.
When it comes to matters of life and death, a full and frank sharing of knowledge is one of our most valuable commodities.
Long live CRUD.
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• Daniel Vujcich is a graduate of the University of Western Australia. He is currently on a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford where he has completed a Master’s degree in International Development, and now reads for a doctorate in Public Health. His research relates to the way in which Indigenous Australian health policies are formulated.
Heath Kelly has asked me to post this comment on his behalf.
Daniel
I read your piece on this topic in Melissa’s round up of Croakey postings. What an interesting collection of stuff Melissa has amassed. Conflict of interest declaration: my Unit is one of the Croakey sponsors.
More than a year ago two of us from the Unit had done a small piece of research at the request of the Commonwealth, and funded by them, on a review of pandemic preparedness in Australian hospitals. As part of the project we produced a review of the international experience on pandemic preparedness in hospitals. This was accepted for publication in Communicable Diseases Intelligence, the infectious diseases journal sponsored and edited by the Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA).
However not long before publication was due, I had a phone call from a (now former) DoHA staff member telling me they would not be able to publish the paper, I think chiefly because of its title. The title may not have been a problem except for the fact that, in between drafting the manuscript and its acceptance for publication, the too-much-feared pandemic had arrived. The title was prophetic. Maybe this was the reason I was told that the politicians did not want it in the public domain, even though the content was all about ways Australian hospitals could have improved their pandemic preparedness. This is how I record the paper in my CV.
Carville K, Kelly H. Pandemic planning in Australian hospitals: fragmented and incomplete. Commun Dis Intell 2009; 33: 36-38 (withdrawn by publisher after acceptance)
(Editor’s note: section deleted)
Not sure if this is the sort of thing you are looking for in your collection, but good to note your interest.
Best wishes, Heath
Dr Heath Kelly
Head | Epidemiology Unit
Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory