How the Post-it note helps the public service evade scrutiny

Lost his notes: Attorney-General Department Secretary Chris Moraitis before a Senate committee last month. Photo: Andrew Meares

The humble Post-It note has emerged as a powerful weapon used by the Australian Public Service to avoid Parliamentary scrutiny and Freedom of Information laws.

The use of the ubiquitous yellow stationery has become widespread in Commonwealth workplaces as an aide memoir for bureaucrats which, unlike formal file notes, can "fall off" official records when the information threatens to embarrass their department.

Post-it notes can fall off files. Photo: iStock Photos

Record-keeping in government departments were thrown into the spotlight last week when one of the nations' most senior public servants told a Senate Committee that he had lost his notes of a highly politically sensitive meeting.

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Opposition and Greens senators seeking access to the file note kept by Attorney General's Department Secretary Chris Moraitis were disappointed when the Canberra veteran told them the document, notes of a meeting with Human Rights Commission Chief Gillian Triggs, had been in a briefcase he had lost.

But former APS insiders have told Fairfaxthe requirements for public servants to keep full notes are often "observed" by jotting relevant information on Post-It notes and sticking them to the file.

"The benefit of a Post-it note is that it can fall off a folio in a file whenever you want it to fall off," one veteran of several departments said.

"It's not FOI-able then, there's no form of record.

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How the Post-it note helps the public service evade scrutiny