The first ALIA Top End Symposium: Powering our Territory

Legislative compliance, vindicating rights, and the role of information literacy

Ana Govan

Abstract

Literacy is critical to the active participation in and uptake of rights by members of the community. Without libraries assisting literacy acquisition from a young age, finding legislation, interpretation of legislative rights and how to go about vindicating breaches such as privacy are seriously impeded. The paper outlines how the vindication of rights in relation to the Federal Privacy Act 1988 and the privacy components of the NT Information Act 2002 is impeded if literacy skills are not acquired.

Introduction

Literacy is critical to the active participation in and uptake of rights by members of the community. Without libraries assisting literacy acquisition from a young age, finding legislation such as the NT Information Act 2002 or the Privacy Act 1998, interpretation of legislative rights and how to go about vindicating breaches such as Privacy are seriously impeded. My talk today outlines the evolution of literacy definition, how statistically significant illiteracy is in Australia, how we as library workers we may not be information literates and how library numbers, funding and the empowerment of the community can be raised through addressing the seven faces of literacy.

Definitions

Starting off with a definition of literacy - what is literacy to you? Traditionally it may be recognised as the ability to read, write and calculate. One may expect a paragraph written by an illiterate person to look like the following;

the way I descride a bumby ride is like wothgan mowtsarts mowsek. Eshe bumby rowd is like a song. Eshe bumb is the a note eche uncon at the same time ste is. That was the mewstere to mowts mowsuk it was vare metereus and unperdekdable. So the next time you drive down a bumby theak of mowtsart

In 1989 the definition had progressed to one similar to the American Library Association who stated it was the ability to locate, select, evaluate and use. So under this definition all of us here as information workers are what Paul Zurowski, president of the US Information Industries Association termed in 1974 as 'Information literates'.

In 2003 this definition has further progressed to one that may indicate we as library workers are not literate. Today's information literacy definition is generally accepted to have the seven faces identified by Christine Bruce in 1997.

To Christine information literacy covers;

• Technology literacy - accessibility to technology
• Knowledge literacy - knowing where to find and how to retrieve information
• Processing literacy - identifying strategies when you don't have knowledge to make a decision
• Organisation literacy - controlling information leading to retrieval and manipulation
• Analysis literacy - critically evaluating what is read
• Intuitive literacy - how insights are gained through personal experience
• Value literacy - using information wisely for the benefit of others

As educated information workers our risk of non compliance with legislation through illiteracy should be pretty low - but let's test it.

Statistics

The 1996 Australian Bureau of Statistics study showed that 50 percent of the Australian community have considerable difficulty reading, 35 percent can read but not possibly turn it into value or knowledge, leaving only 17 percent fully literate according to Christine's seven faces of information literacy.

Only half of the 17 pecent had degree's or postragraduate qualifications. About half of all professionals possessed good or very good prose literacy skills . Results of the 1996 study are indicated below.

Number and proportion of people at each literacy skill level, 1996

Prose

Source: Aspects of Literacy, Assessed Skill Levels, Australia, 1996 (Cat. no. 4228.0).

Place on top of this the particularly US statistics that show that there is a direct correlation between literacy levels and incarceration or recidivism and children with illiterate parents are also likely to be illiterate. Australian Bureau of Statistics show not surprisingly the elderly, indigenous and those with English as a second language are more likely to have poor to very poor information literacy.

Results from the International Adult Literacy Survey (OECD 2000; ABS 1997), also indicate that current Australian literacy levels do not meet the necessary literacy and numeracy levels to respond to training, workplace and citizenship demands placed on people in the information age.

Still feeling literate, library workers?

Examples

Now for another test. The NT Information Act 2002 was enacted on 1 July 2003. How many people here work for an NT government agency (excluding NTU)? How many people here are aware of the legislation? How did you become aware of it's existence? Could anyone describe a little about it for me?

The NT Information Act has three components: Information access (commonly referred to in other jurisdictions as freedom of information), privacy and records management. The information access component gives you the right to ask government agencies for information relating to a topic on activities they undertake. Under the privacy components agencies must keep your personal and sensitive information secure, current, not share it and give you access to any information held about you. Under the records management component all business transactions must be captured into a record keeping system and not destroyed without identifying it did exist.

Similarly, those working for federal government agencies or businesses with a turnover of more than $3 million must comply with the Privacy Act 1998 which has similar privacy principles to the NT Information Act.