Whoops…

When questioned about by Senator Pratt release of data by NBN Co today at the Senate Environment and Communications Legislative Committee earlier today, Drew Clarke, the Secretary of Department of Communications mistakenly said that:

myNBN is one of the department’s website. I’m very familiar with it.

It appears the secretary had mistaken the myBroadband website with the independent rollout tracking website myNBN.info, which incidentally existed prior to the communications department’s own website which was launched earlier this year. The secretary goes on to say:

And indeed, the underlying datasets in it are available on data.gov[.au].

In fact, if it was not for the confusion, this statement would be extremely inaccurate given that the datasets that underly the myNBN website have actually been removed by NBN Co since the change in Government. In fact, the datasets had been requested on data.gov.au to be reinstated, but has subsequently been dismissed by the Department of Communications itself.

A complaint letter has also been sent to the Department of Communications regarding their response to the data.gov.au, however, a response is yet to be received.

The Senate Hearings continue, with the Communications department appearing tomorrow afternoon and with NBN Co to front the committee tomorrow night.