Wikipedia editing by the Australian Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet

Channel 10 TV news interviewed me yesterday about the use of Wikipedia by the Australian government. The head of the Prime Minister's department is reported to have denied that his staff were involved. However, the online records indicate the changes were made using a IP address allocated to PM&C.

THE Commonwealth's top public servant has denied that any of his staff, or those of Prime Minister John Howard, have used their internet service to make changes to Wikipedia entries. ...

But PM&C secretary Dr Peter Shergold denied his staff were involved, after checking with the department's service provider.

"I have been informed by our internet service provider that the changes to Wikipedia entries made after 2004 and being attributed to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet were, in fact, not made by anyone in this department or the prime minister's office," he has said.

"The network address that appears against the charges being reported by the media is that of another customer of our internet service provider - not my department. ...

From: Wiki edit story wrong: department head, AAP in Herald and Weekly Times, August 24, 2007 06:39pm

The Wikipedia records show that a change was made to the entry for Peter Costello on 28 June 2007 to remove "(AKA "Captain Smirk")" using the IP address 210.193.176.115 . The Australia Pacific Network Information Centre indicates this address is allocated to "Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet":

% [whois.apnic.net node-1]
% Whois data copyright terms    http://www.apnic.net/db/dbcopyright.html   

inetnum:      210.193.176.96 - 210.193.176.127
netname:      MCT-pmc-04
country:      AU
descr:        Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet
descr:        Intellicentre Gateway Internet Service
admin-c:      MCT2-AP
tech-c:       MCT2-AP
status:       ASSIGNED NON-PORTABLE
changed:      cgacis@macquarie.net.au 20050107
mnt-by:       MAINT-AU-MCT
source:       APNIC

role:         Macquarie Corporate Telecommunications
address:      L16 477 Pitt Street Sydney Central Building, Sydney 2000 ...