open government briefing 

From the first days of forming a Government in May 2010, the Coalition has said that reforming politics is a major priority. This is reflected in ideas around developing a more open government, which permeate Big Society programme and policies on Localism.

Background

From the first days of forming a Government in May 2010, the Coalition has said that reforming politics is a major priority. This is reflected in ideas around developing a more open government, which permeate Big Society programme and policies on Localism.

"The Government believes that we need to throw open the doors of public bodies, to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account." The Coalition Agreement May 2010.

"Greater transparency across Government is at the heart of our shared commitment to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account; to reduce the deficit and deliver better value for money in public spending; and to realise significant economic benefits by enabling businesses and non-profit organisations to build innovative applications and websites using public data." Letter from David Cameron to all Government Departments in May 2010.

The Big Society programme makes an explicit commitment to one aspect of open government as one of its‟ 5 key themes "We will create a new "right to data‟ so that government-held datasets can be requested and used by the public, and then published on a regular basis".

What's driving Open Government?

Open government is seen as a way to strengthen democracy, promote efficiency and improve the effectiveness of government. The Government‟s policies on Open Government have four main drivers

1. Desire to rebuild public confidence in politicians and public institutions by creating a culture of accountability

2. Desire to change the relationship between citizen and state, with citizens having a greater involvement in what happens in their area, and help government make better decisions.

3. A belief that opening up government data will allow business and not for profit organisations to innovate and deliver services. "Setting government data free will bring significant economic benefits by enabling businesses and non-profit organisations to build innovative applications and websites" Coalition Agreement. Research by the University of Cambridge has estimated that by opening up data economic benefits of up to £6 Billion can be realised.

4. The development of new technology - making it possible for mass two way communication, and for raw data to be made available to the public and re-used

Different elements of Open Government

Open Government encompasses a range of activities and initiatives. Some of the main ones are listed here.

Open data

The open data movement across government has been building momentum since Sir Tim Berners Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt were appointed in June 2009 to lead a panel of experts to advise the Cabinet Office on how government can best use the internet to make non-personal public data as widely available as possible.

New requirements are being made of national, local government and other public bodies, around publishing both statistics and spending information.

A new "Right to Data‟ is being introduced that ensures government held data can be requested by members of the public (via the OPSI Unlocking Service), and that publicly held non personal data be published regularly.

There will be a requirement for this information to be provided, in an open and standardised format that can be used and re-used easily by third parties. Cabinet Office Minister, Francis Maude told the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool that all data released through the Freedom of Information Act will be reusable and machine readable (ie on spreadsheets), so that it is both available to everyone and can be re-used for social or commercial purposes. Data released on data.gov.uk, the government‟s main portal for open data, is available under a new Open Government License.

The Right to Data shifts the emphasis from individuals making requests for data (as is currently the case with the Freedom of Information Act), to an assumption that data should be published, unless there is a reason not to do so (for reasons of national security, commercial sensitivity etc).

The information that will be published as a matter of course will include statistics on crime, education, health, Parliamentary bills, MPs expenses. Some of this has already started to happen. National and local government and public bodies are already publishing information, for example the data from the Ordinance Survey Map has already been published. Work on the Right to Data which will enshrine this in legislation is planned to start in 2013.

National Government is already being required to publish details of all new government contracts, including publishing tender documents above £10,000. The Combined Online Information System (COINS) is a database of public expenditure by Department, used to produce reports to Parliament and the public. This has now been published on www.data.gov.uk, which was formally launched in January 2010, and to date makes over 4,300 datasets available to the public.

Public bodies and Government are being required to publish the salaries of top Civil Servants and public body officials, over £150,000. When these were published for the first time in June 2010 it revealed that 172 civil servants get paid more than the Prime Minister.

Local authorities are now being encouraged to publish meeting minutes, and local service and performance data, including publishing all items of spending over £500 and contracts and tender documents in full. These requirements are expected to be implemented by local authorities by January 2011, and the Government is planning to run a public awareness campaign in December 2010.

Direct and collaborative democracy

The Coalition Government has stated their ambition to support the development of new forms of democracy to complement the representative democracy of electing councillors and MPs.

Direct democracy is a form of governance where the mass of the population directly make a decision, rather than have the decision made by their elected representatives. Examples of direct democracy are the referendum on the Alternative Vote electoral system expected in May 2011, and measures expected in the forthcoming Localism and Decentralisation Bill which will give residents

the power to instigate local referendums on any local issue and to veto council tax increases above a ceiling set by Government.

Examples of collaborative democracy, known as participatory democracy, include initiatives such as; participatory budgeting, community led planning, and neighbourhood forums. Another example is the move towards Community Budgets announced as part of the Spending Review. From April 2011 an initial 16 pilot areas are being given direct control of local spending in their locality, which pool various strands of central government funding into a neighbourhood account for tackling problems around families with complex needs.

At a national level, the Coalition has also committed to bringing in legislation that any public petition that secures 100,000 signatures within a year will trigger a debate in Parliament, and the petition with the most signatures will be tabled as a Bill. The mechanism to do this is expected to be introduced for debate in Parliament in November 2011.

The previous government set up a system for public petitioning of 10 Downing Street. Responses to e-petitions were compiled by the Cabinet Office in conjunction with relevant government departments, and issued after an e-petition had gained more than 500 signatures. The Government has signalled that they will be adopting a similar system, and will be launching a new e-petition system at the end of 2010.

E-democracy

E democracy broadly means citizen participation in representative democracy, as well as more participatory or direct forms of citizen involvement, through use of the internet, social media and mobile phone technology.
Many of the new initiatives for direct and collaborative forms of democracy rely on e-democracy methods of participation.

Participation through Crowdsourcing

An example of Open Government and e-democracy is using new technology to ask a mass of people for ideas and solutions to problems - known as "policy crowdsourcing‟.

The concept and the term crowdsourcing have been taken from the world of business - for example asking customers to contribute ideas for product development.

The Coalition used this technique in three major initiatives since taking office. It asked the public to respond to the Coalition Programme on Government websites. The Treasury led "Spending Challenge‟ which asked the public to suggest ways to save money, and the Deputy Prime Minister launched a call for the public to submit ideas on laws to scrap on "Your Freedom‟, to inform the development of the Freedom Bill.

Results from these three initiatives have been mixed. The Your Freedom site crashed shortly after it was launched. Critics, such as the Democratic Society have criticised the poor quality of the ideas and debate generated, and others, such as Simon Burrell from Involve, point to little changes in policy resulting from them. Defenders, including ministers and civil servants have pointed to the large numbers who took part (100,000 took part in Spending Challenge), and a number of concrete actions (the Treasury point to 24 ideas being taken forward from the Spending Challenge) attributed to the ideas from the public through these initiatives.

Local authorities are also exploring how to use new technology to ask the public for their views on spending priorities in order to make cuts. An example of this is the London Borough of Redbridge. http://www.redbridge.gov.uk/cms/redbridge_conversation_2010.aspx

The VCS is also starting to crowdsource data too. NCVO for example have announced that they are going to use crowdsourcing techniques to find out the impact of the cuts on VCS organisations.

Why is open government relevant to the voluntary and community sector?

VCS groups will have new access to information that could help with campaigns, funding bids, and service development.

Collaborative and direct democracy provides new ways for VCS groups to organise and participate in local governance, and to support local communities to do the same.

Some tenders to VCS organisations will be published, so will come under public scrutiny - need to be able to explain ourselves.

Local referendum and national petitioning could provide a focus for campaigning on specific issues.

VCS can develop their offer to local and national government in relation to open government initiatives - potentially new opportunities.

VCS could adopt some of uses of technology and approach to transparency to be more accountable to beneficiaries, improve communication and profile.

Further Information

UK Government expenditure by department is published on www.data.gov.uk

Departmental Structural Reform plans include Government plans on transparency and open data http://www.number10.gov.uk/other/2010/07/structural-reform-plans-53023

Cabinet Offices to e-petitions before 6th April 2011 and information about the new e-petitioning mechanism can be seen at http://www.hmg.gov.uk/epetition-responses.aspx