While Auckland councillors debate housing intensification backdowns and advocates warn that MSD clawbacks will financially cripple abuse survivors, here's what's actually happening behind the curtain of government transparency: the Public Service Commission released nine OIA responses this week. Five of them were duplicates. (Source: FYI.org.nz (OIA tracker), oia-recent-responses)

Three separate releases for the same request about ADHD and inclusion in the public service. Two separate releases labelled only as "Communications". No explanation. No correction. Just the same documents, uploaded again and again, inflating the appearance of transparency while delivering none of its substance.

This matters because FYI.org.nz is where New Zealanders go to see what their government is actually telling people who ask questions. It's the public record of official information requests. When agencies pollute that record with duplicates, they're not just being sloppy. They're making it harder to see what information is actually being released, and what's being refused.

The Public Service Commission is supposed to set standards for the entire public service. It publishes guidance on OIA best practice. It lectures other agencies about transparency and responsiveness. And this week, it couldn't even manage to upload nine responses without repeating more than half of them.

Here's what those nine responses actually contained: one unique request about ADHD (released three times), and two separate communications requests (each released twice). That's two actual pieces of information, packaged as nine releases. The maths is embarrassing.

This isn't a one-off error. It's a window into how government transparency actually works when nobody's watching closely. Agencies meet their legal obligations by releasing information. But the quality of that release, the ease of finding it, the basic competence of the process? That's optional.

Meanwhile, the same government departments that can't upload OIA responses without duplicating them are the ones deciding which requests to refuse, which to delay, and which to answer so narrowly that the response is meaningless. They're the ones telling New Zealanders what they're allowed to know about how their tax money is spent and how their country is run.

The Public Service Commission will probably say this was a technical error, a glitch in their upload process, an honest mistake. Fine. But honest mistakes reveal something too. They reveal that uploading accurate, usable information to the public OIA tracker isn't a priority. Nobody checked. Nobody noticed. Nobody cared enough to get it right.

You can see all of this yourself on FYI.org.nz. The duplicates are still there. The Public Service Commission hasn't pulled them down or corrected the record. They're just sitting there, making the transparency system look busier and more responsive than it actually is.

This is your government accountability in action: nine releases, two topics, and a system so focused on appearing transparent that it forgot to actually be useful.