The Freedom of Information request to the Welsh government submitted by David Gill to the Welsh Government (see: 'Portable Antiquities Scheme in Wales: details published') has raised more questions than it has answers. What is REALLY interesting here is that the FOI request asked for all relevant emails and memoranda to be included, but it turns out from this that in the whole government system in the whole past year that this has been discussed, there have been just TWO documents generated. Two documents which decide not only a major area of heritage policy but also how several hundred thousand pounds of public money are being shifted from the original destination, to another one. Isn't that a bit odd? It looks like there is something more to this than meets the eye. Assuming that Welsh Government has released everything (both documents!), as obliged to do under the FOI act, then it becomes clear that the discussion about this has been outside normal channels, ones that leave no paper trail.
Showing posts with label Transparency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Transparency. Show all posts
Friday, December 30, 2011
Welsh PAS "fix" a Deal Done Behind the Scenes?
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The Freedom of Information request to the Welsh government submitted by David Gill to the Welsh Government (see: 'Portable Antiquities Scheme in Wales: details published') has raised more questions than it has answers. What is REALLY interesting here is that the FOI request asked for all relevant emails and memoranda to be included, but it turns out from this that in the whole government system in the whole past year that this has been discussed, there have been just TWO documents generated. Two documents which decide not only a major area of heritage policy but also how several hundred thousand pounds of public money are being shifted from the original destination, to another one. Isn't that a bit odd? It looks like there is something more to this than meets the eye. Assuming that Welsh Government has released everything (both documents!), as obliged to do under the FOI act, then it becomes clear that the discussion about this has been outside normal channels, ones that leave no paper trail.
The Freedom of Information request to the Welsh government submitted by David Gill to the Welsh Government (see: 'Portable Antiquities Scheme in Wales: details published') has raised more questions than it has answers. What is REALLY interesting here is that the FOI request asked for all relevant emails and memoranda to be included, but it turns out from this that in the whole government system in the whole past year that this has been discussed, there have been just TWO documents generated. Two documents which decide not only a major area of heritage policy but also how several hundred thousand pounds of public money are being shifted from the original destination, to another one. Isn't that a bit odd? It looks like there is something more to this than meets the eye. Assuming that Welsh Government has released everything (both documents!), as obliged to do under the FOI act, then it becomes clear that the discussion about this has been outside normal channels, ones that leave no paper trail.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Knee-Jerk "Policy" Making
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A few weeks ago David Gill submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Welsh government in an effort to understand what was going on with the Portable Antiquities Scheme. The result ('Portable Antiquities Scheme in Wales: details published') was quite an eye-opener. The response revealed little real information about the behind-the-scenes doings, but enough to show the usual ad-hoc-approach was being applied to portable antiquity issues.
It turns out that, after the announcement by the British Museum that the funding for the Welsh PAS would be cut, on 26 November 2010, the National Museum of Wales alerted CyMAL to the problem that Wales would need to meet the funding gap of £64K (as David notes, it is worth comparing these figures to the ones that appeared in the PAS press release in November 2010).
It seems from the released documents that almost nothing was done to deal with the problem for a year. The second memorandum from CyMAL on the matter dates from 28 October 2011 and dates from after the agitation of metal detectorists suddenly alerted (among other things by this blog, started at the beginning of October) to the impending demise of the Scheme if nothing was done. It was prompted among other things from the letters being sent to the Minister for Housing, Regeneration and Heritage and CyMAL: Museums Archives and Libraries by Assembly Members (no doubt prompted by "metal detectorists"). These had a fixed "time for response" term, which is why a 'final' decision had to be taken so quickly. As David Gill notes:
These emerge from the 28th October memorandum and they are a total reverse of the original BM money-saving proposal. The expenditure reduction proposed for immediate application in 2012 will not - on this projection - occur until 2014-5. So where is the BM going to get an additional £33550 from? At what cost to other parts of the PAS system will the Welsh PAS be kept on? Where will the Welsh government find the additional £88000 for the next four years ?
The total cost of having a PAS in Wales over the next four years is projected to be £277,080. To what extent is it needed, to service the collecting activities of the handful of Welsh artefact hunters who show some of their finds to it. Let us note that one of the more prolific Welsh 'contributors' to the PAS database enters the information himself, without any recourse to the FLO system. Why does Wales need a separate PAS system ?
A few weeks ago David Gill submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Welsh government in an effort to understand what was going on with the Portable Antiquities Scheme. The result ('Portable Antiquities Scheme in Wales: details published') was quite an eye-opener. The response revealed little real information about the behind-the-scenes doings, but enough to show the usual ad-hoc-approach was being applied to portable antiquity issues.
It turns out that, after the announcement by the British Museum that the funding for the Welsh PAS would be cut, on 26 November 2010, the National Museum of Wales alerted CyMAL to the problem that Wales would need to meet the funding gap of £64K (as David notes, it is worth comparing these figures to the ones that appeared in the PAS press release in November 2010).
It seems from the released documents that almost nothing was done to deal with the problem for a year. The second memorandum from CyMAL on the matter dates from 28 October 2011 and dates from after the agitation of metal detectorists suddenly alerted (among other things by this blog, started at the beginning of October) to the impending demise of the Scheme if nothing was done. It was prompted among other things from the letters being sent to the Minister for Housing, Regeneration and Heritage and CyMAL: Museums Archives and Libraries by Assembly Members (no doubt prompted by "metal detectorists"). These had a fixed "time for response" term, which is why a 'final' decision had to be taken so quickly. As David Gill notes:
Interestingly the memorandum required a decision by 1 November 2011. In other words the memorandum was sent on a Friday and a decision was required by the following Tuesday. The prompt seems to have come from "metal detecting clubs in Wales".In fact what the Welsh government say is that "there has been some publicity around the possible threat to the continued operation of the PAS in Wales, particularly from metal detectorists and historians concerned at the possible cessation of the scheme in Wales". The memorandum discusses the arrangements for an announcement: "Rather than a press release ..." it is decided (perhaps to avoid awkward journalistic questions) to keep the announcement low-key as a mere statement on the Welsh Government website, and proposes a draft text for that announcement (see the post below this). Note that the details of the funding are absent from this statement. It also turns out that the text on the PAS website of which Roger Bland claims to be 'author', was in fact penned in a government office in Wales, a long way from Bloomsbury.
These emerge from the 28th October memorandum and they are a total reverse of the original BM money-saving proposal. The expenditure reduction proposed for immediate application in 2012 will not - on this projection - occur until 2014-5. So where is the BM going to get an additional £33550 from? At what cost to other parts of the PAS system will the Welsh PAS be kept on? Where will the Welsh government find the additional £88000 for the next four years ?
The total cost of having a PAS in Wales over the next four years is projected to be £277,080. To what extent is it needed, to service the collecting activities of the handful of Welsh artefact hunters who show some of their finds to it. Let us note that one of the more prolific Welsh 'contributors' to the PAS database enters the information himself, without any recourse to the FLO system. Why does Wales need a separate PAS system ?
Spot the Difference
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The draft text ("doc. 1 - Statement of Information" ) of the proposed announcement by the Welsh government recently released under a Freedom of Information request is not identical to that subsequently published ('The future of the Portable Antiquities Scheme in Wales '), and the differences are of interest. Doc 1 refers to a "revised funding package from Wales to support the continued operation of the popular and successful Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) in Wales for 2012-13 onwards". In the published version the word "onwards" has been removed. Likewise in the final paragraph the section that "the funding package being considered" would allow for "the continuation of the role undertaken by the Welsh Archaeological Trusts", the word "continuation" has been deleted (leaving an ungrammatical sentence). Stylistic changes, or revealing that the proposed changes cannot be envisaged as a permanent solution?
The draft text ("doc. 1 - Statement of Information" ) of the proposed announcement by the Welsh government recently released under a Freedom of Information request is not identical to that subsequently published ('The future of the Portable Antiquities Scheme in Wales '), and the differences are of interest. Doc 1 refers to a "revised funding package from Wales to support the continued operation of the popular and successful Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) in Wales for 2012-13 onwards". In the published version the word "onwards" has been removed. Likewise in the final paragraph the section that "the funding package being considered" would allow for "the continuation of the role undertaken by the Welsh Archaeological Trusts", the word "continuation" has been deleted (leaving an ungrammatical sentence). Stylistic changes, or revealing that the proposed changes cannot be envisaged as a permanent solution?
Sunday, October 9, 2011
The Secrecy that Surrounds Portable Antiquities
There is a total lack of transparency about just about every aspect of the collecting and - especially - trade in antiquities. For some reason the world has got used to accepting that this "has to be" some kind of a norm, without really asking why and whether it is beneficial to treat a common heritage like the archaeological resource without full transparency. Obviously it is not, it hides a whole load of egregious examples of extremely bad practice from any kind of public scrutiny."Metal detecting" is notorious in this regard. Artefact hunters shield all sorts of information from public scrutiny on the spurious grounds that the "only reason is" that if they do not, unscrupulous individuals in the metal detector owning community might use this information to "poach" the artefacts from "their" most "productive" sites. Of course it is precisely such sites that heritage professionals need to know about at the earliest opportunity to protect them from being exploited erosively by artefact hunting. It does not take much of an imagination to realise that this too is a reason why artefact hunters (interested in getting stuff out of these sites for their own private use) are not too keen on providing this information.
Metal detectorists like to persuade the public that the "majority of them are responsible" and it is only a "small minority of black sheep" that are the cause of the problems with artefact hunting. That is belied by what goes on in some clubs and the contents of many of the internet discussion groups in which they gather and discuss candidly what they do or want to do - most often received wholly unjudgementally by the rest of the "responsible" membership. It is for this reason that public scrutiny of these metal detecting forums would soon betray the extent of the "portable antiquity scam". It is for this reason that the majority of artefact hunters' forums are not open access, but access to the posts is restricted to approved members only. The forums take great care to make sure that critical eyes do not get to see what goes on in the closed sections of these forums.
Even among themselves, "metal detectorists" seldom write on their forums under their own name, but under an assumed "screen name" to hide their real identity. PAS does not report finders' names, so no member of the public without special access to its database can check precisely how many items a self-proclaimed "responsible metal detectorist" has actually reported. The exact place artefacts have been taken from is never reported, so again it is impossible to say whether a reported find has come actually from a known site or merely an adjacent area.
All these things conspire to hide the actual patterns nature and scale of artefact collecting activity going on under the umbrella of the Portable Antiquities Scheme.
Friday, October 7, 2011
How Many Finds Are Being Reported Responsibly?
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A key question is how many finds are currently being reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme by metal detectorists in Wales. Using the new 'search' facility of the Portable Antiquities Scheme database we can find out:
Statistical analysis of the database for for Saturday 1st January 2011until Tuesday 1st October 2011
Let us compare the figures from the whole of Wales with just a few English counties for the same period:
**
It can be seen that finders from the whole of Wales are simply not reporting as many of the items they discover as those from a single county in England, even some of those (Avon for example) much smaller in size and with a smaller population.
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