Where we are today: chasing half a dozen ministers who won’t take responsibility
In today’s Guardian, Michael Cross looks back at more than six months of the Free Our Data campaign, and rounds up what we’re truly found out in this time.
Briefly, it’s that we have a £1 billion business which supports 25% of the economy – that is, public sector information – and yet nobody in government is prepared to take responsibility for it. By our count, there are at least six ministers (including Margaret Hodge, Ed Miliband, ohn Healey, David Miliband, Angela Smith and Pat McFadden) who are in some way or other in charge of public sector information. And none of them seems to want to be in charge of it, or take responsibility. There are two ministers in charge of the Ordnance Survey.
Read all about it at The fight has only just begun. And give us your advice on what we ought to do next. We wondered whether fixing up a few interviews with ministers might not help. And what would be the best questions to ask them?
- The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
- Today in The Guardian: Berners-Lee talks; who should we be chasing? (23 March 2006; score: 36.92%)
- Which organisations should we be chasing? Let's make a list.. (16 March 2006; score: 35.51%)
- Do ministers listen to advisory panels? The one on public sector information (PSI) isn't so sure (8 February 2007; score: 31.46%)
- International expert fun rumbles on (10 November 2009; score: 30.68%)
- Why the police are against crime mapping - and what it tells us (30 May 2008; score: 22.18%)
October 13th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
The fight should go on!
A timely and objective view of the Guardian’s campaign to date. I share your view that there is a wrong to be righted here, though not necessarily the solution you opt for.
What is most important about the conclusions you draw from the campaign to date is that there is a policy vacuum. The fact that otherwise voluble Ministers won’t comment on the situation, or even, in some cases, acknowledge the points being put to them, is a sure sign that they are not entirely comfortable with the status quo.
There may still be some need to add further fuel to the debate in order to ensure that the matters cannot be handled in isolation. Individual Ministers may be able to respond to one aspect of the overall problem in a low key manner which denies the centrality of the PSI issue. However, if there is recognition across Westminster that something is rotten in the state of PSI, then it becomes much more difficult to undermine the wider case for change.
There are operational issues that can be used to illustrate the argument:
1. The failure of the PGA – The DCLG tendered for mapping services requirements on behalf of all government departments and agencies, but managed only to let the very small part of the procurement that dealt with aerial photography. All the essential central services for mapping, gazetteers etc were not let. This is basically because OS has such a stranglehold on the underlying GI data that every bid, whether from OS itself or from one of its many trading parties, had to be made on terms of usage defined by OS. These terms are notoriously strict, and introduced restrictions which were unacceptable to DCLG and its fellow users, as they prevented goverment from meeting its operational needs. How ironic is it that an Agency overseen by DCLG Ministers should insist on terms for PSI data that are too restrictive for the Government to accept them? One might think that Ministers would want to act to prevent such tom-foolery!
2. Ignoring your regulator – OPSI has a central role on PSI, as the Guardian points out. It oversees the Re-Use of Public sector Information, and it has its own Information Fair Trader Scheme to kitemark good practice. A report called Re-Verification of commitment to information fair trading : Ordnance Survey – October 2005 was eventually published in March 2006. It was very critical of OS’s behaviour, but re-accredited them with the proviso that the issues it identified were all tackled in the next financial year. OPSI put priorities against the changes it demanded – 4 High; 11 Medium; and 1 Low. OS made strenuous attempts to ensure that its rebuttal of OPSI’s findings was given equal prominence at publication, and that rebuttal argued that OPSI did not understand OS’s business. So have OS changed their behaviour? Well, not if the results of OPSI’s review of a complaint by IA are anything to go by. This report, published in July, found specific instances of virtually all the generalised problems that the IFTS report identified. Three months further on there is still no visible sign that OS are taking any heed of either report from OPSI. If regulators get ignored in this way, PSI regulations will fall into disrepute.
3. Duality over INSPIRE – The Guardian has commented on the ambivalent position adopted in the UK over INSPIRE. This is the EU directive on how GI data should be made available across all EU countries. The final negotiations are coming up in which the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council for Europe will have to go through the conciliation process. There are rumours of deals to protect the unique status of Trading Funds in the UK. The outcome on how to handle GI data from PSI Holders is, for now at least, a gamble. It might therefore be felt that now is not the best time to defining a UK GI Strategy. This strategy will have to operate in parallel to INSPIRE, and its method of tackling public sector information must therefore be compatible between the two strategies. However, DCLG has chosen to define its view of the UK-wide GI Strategy by getting consultants to draft the strategy right now. Their guidance on information trading would be interesting to see – toss a coin for it?
What Ministers and other interested politicians lack is two things (…well two for starters!). Firstly they don’t have a trigger of sufficient substance to be ignored. Secondly, they don’t – with due acknowledgement to the Guardian’s particular viewpoint – have any real idea of what to do about it.
So are we doomed to continued inaction? Well, perhaps not. One potential trigger that is on the horizon, may also contain the seeds of an action plan as well. I refer to the Commercial Use of Public Information (CUPI) study due to be published by OFT shortly. It has looked at the current practices, and must surely have found them to be inconsistent at the very least. Let’s hope that lifting the lid in this way can make sure that Government can’t avoid the smell arising from current PSI management.
October 13th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
Thanks Dan, I think you’re dead right about the ministers. The other problem of course is that our solution would have short-term costs.
We’ll be scrutinising the market study for any seeds of an action plan – in the meantime we welcome ideas.
The PGA imbroglio is extraordinary. Watch this space.
October 13th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Hi, many thanks to the Guardian for this campaign, it is fully supported by at least one froggy :).
If you read french, you might want to have a look at this discussion :
http://bloghorree.berrendonner.org/wordpress/2006/09/22/legifrance-trop-cher/
Even the electronic version of the law is not public domain in France, you have a database-law based ugly contract, very high fees, angry law professors, administrators who say that university steal content from the site eating bandwidth (P2P solution anyone?).
Feel free to bash the froggies on this :)
October 14th, 2006 at 9:14 am
Thanks Laurent! Next week we will be reporting some progress by les rosbifs, which may be of interest.
m
October 14th, 2006 at 10:51 am
This campaign although well meaning, is flawed.
You are missing the key point about freedom of information. It should be free not just without cost, but free as in speech.
Will you be happy if the government release this information but only in such a way that you need a computer program which will cost you hundreds or thousands of pounds to see it?
It depresses me so much that The Guardian are the only British paper pushing to make this sort of information freely available, and completely missing the point.
October 14th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
John, we’re suggesting that the government makes its data available on the web. You don’t need a program costing hundreds of pounds – your local public library should have web acccess. (If it doesn’t, please let us know!)
It’s the very universality of the web, and the tiny marginal cost of dissemination thereon, that makes “free our data” a compelling proposition.
Of course in principle everything should be available on hard copy, but it would seem reasonable for citizens to be charged printing costs and postage. Or am I mistaken?
October 14th, 2006 at 11:40 pm
So, you want all government-collected data to be freely available to all, i.e. the private sector. Including the upcoming National Identity Register? Is that what this campaign is all about?
October 15th, 2006 at 9:57 am
Erno, no. We’re not talking about data that would be subject to the Data Protection Act.
October 17th, 2006 at 11:12 am
Copy of article /comment just posted on the Defra wiki:
To free up the discussion, first free our data
Maybe the level of contribution to this Defra wiki is influenced by the extent to which potential contributors have trust in the whole process of dialogue between government and citizens?
It seems a reasonable assumption that for there to be democratic discussion of any issue, it’s good to be able to refer to, talk about and use factual information or data to inform the debate.
There’s a current campaign called: Free Our Data: Make taxpayers’ data available to them. If ordinary citizens and community groups don’t feel sufficiently empowered to freely and easily use what they might see as ‘their’ data (having paid through taxes to create it) how can they have confidence in effectively participating in any democratic debate?
This original version of this comment was first published on the Sustainable Community Action wiki.