Public Sector Informant | Fake agencies emerge in Musk-land, that's DPIE not DOPIE to you

The billionaire has decided Australia will not be one of the 23 nations whose key government officials, institutions and state-media will have a safeguard from being impersonated on the platform.

Accounts pretending to be major companies, government bodies and world leaders emerged in droves after Mr Musk made it a simple $8 transaction for scammers and pranksters alike to appear authentic with the "verified" blue tick.

No verification process is required, in a lesson in how not to establish digital ID.

Belatedly, a new "official" tag was offered for verified government accounts in selected countries: China, France, Russia, the UK, the United States, Belarus, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates.

With Services Australia already impersonated and a slew of scammers in the wake of Optus and Medibank hacks, someone should put a call into Twitter HQ fast.

But this needs someone on the case a bit more persuasive than United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet, who has been tweeting to Mr Musk almost daily. The senator complained to the Chief Twit about there being "too many fake accounts", but no response yet.

In the strange land of freedom of information requests, junior staff are often redacted from final releases.

For the most part, we think that's fair.

Most lower-level public servants are just doing what they're told and the blame often lies higher up the chain.

But where is the line drawn for who's junior and who's not?

Well, one department FOI team recently told us for APS employees, it's anyone at the EL and APS levels.

Apparently, earning in excess of $150,000 and being a director of a division still earns you the title of junior schmuck for the purposes of FOIs.

Perhaps, what's more shocking is that in ministerial offices, junior is everyone below the chief of staff.

You might be senior advisor in title but you're nothing more than a junior in the eyes of the FOI team.

Nothing gets a public servant more red than seeing someone swan into a position without going through the usual layers of bureaucratic tape.

Just look at the Merit Protection Commissioner's workload if you need any convincing.

In a recently-answered question on notice, it seems the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's latest pick was exactly that.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said an all-star APS panel looked at 20 applicants for the role of FOI commissioner, with the panel line-up including the office's head Angelene Falk, APS Commissioner Peter Woolcott and Attorney-General's Department secretary Katherine Jones.

But the job was eventually awarded to Leo Hardiman, on recommendation by then-first law officer Michaelia Cash.

The Canberra Times is not suggesting Mr Hardiman is unsuitable for the role - he was appointed in accordance with the Merit and Transparency Policy - but Mr Dreyfus did point out he was not one of the 20 applicants looked at by the panel.

The new FOI honcho previously worked at the Australian Government Solicitor as its deputy chief general counsel and its national leader.

Maybe he can propose changing the laws so we can FOI what Senator Cash told the former prime minister about her decision.

We can confirm former prime minister Kevin Rudd's battles against the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme rages on, many years after it was first introduced.

A recent FOI revealed the former Labor top dog and his staffer's stoushes with the Attorney-General's Department. In October last year, he wrote to secretary Katherine Jones asking the department to look into two News Corp reports he considered should be placed on the scheme's public register.

Mr Rudd's letter was left on the bureaucratic version of "read" for months until the secretary responded in February this year. The department didn't have enough information to determine whether the major news outlet's stories could be deemed as being influenced by a foreign entity.

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The response prompted Mr Rudd's staffer to leave a wry response.

"Because neither News Corp or the foreign principal elects to tell the department, the department doesn't want to know?" the staffer emailed back to Ms Jones' letter.

They signed off on a simple message: "Don't ask, don't tell."

We hear that Department of Defence is struggling to keep its cyber experts to maintain system security, as the Australian Signals Directorate can outbid it and any other government department.

But retention woes stretch across all roles.

Last week Defence Force chief Angus Campbell rolled out the latest effort to entice Australian Defence Force soldiers, sailors and aviators to stick around after their return of service obligation is up.

Annual leave for full-time ADF will increase from four weeks to five, along with more flexibility in how it is managed, General Campbell says.

Plus, there'll be a bonus $2000 to all salaries from June 2023.

Sounds wonderful, right? Except leave balances are already high.

"I've got no clue how my unit will handle it. We can hardly deal with leave now," said one aviator of their rejected leave applications.

We asked for agency naming stories and you came through with some wonderfully awkward agency acronyms.

"The permanent head issued a decree that the Department of Primary Industries and Energy was to be known as DPIE, not DOPIE," a contributor told us.

Another mentioned the Department of Home Affairs precursor, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, pronounced as "dimmer".

But our favourite as when the Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics became the ABS: "One senior officer noted to the Minister, loudly, 'We've been caught - All Bull S*!t.'"

We hear from sources that the contractor layoffs are hitting just in time for Christmas - know more? What's the worst case of impersonating an official you've seen?

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