POINT 4.0

1. Open Government in Great Britain
Eleanor Stewart
Head of Transparency
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
@digenghmg
20 May 2015

2. Today the UK is a transparency
success story:
• Data.gov.uk
– Used data to drive efficiencies in public services
– Used data to improve accountability
• Legislated on release of data
• Mandated Digital by default & open
document formats
• Ranked no 1 in world
• Working with OGP partners in 17 countries
• Engage with data users
• Created the ODI to build and support start-
ups/data users.

3. Magna Carta 1215
• Citizens not Subjects
• Everyone subject to
the law including the
King
• Right to a fair trial
• Check on the crowns
ability to levy taxes
• 25 Barons elected

4. Bill of Rights 1689
• laws should not be dispensed with or suspended
without the consent of Parliament;
• no taxes should be levied without the authority of
Parliament;
• the right to petition the monarch should be without
fear of retribution;
• no standing army may be maintained during
peacetime without the consent of Parliament;
• Protestant subjects may have arms for their defence
as suitable to their class and as allowed by law;
• the election of members of Parliament should be free;
• the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in
Parliament should not to be impeached or questioned
in any court or place out of Parliament;
• excessive bail should not be required, nor excessive
fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment
inflicted;
• jurors should be duly impannelled and returned and
jurors in high treason trials should be freeholders;
• promises of fines or forfeitures before conviction are
void;
• Parliaments should be held frequently.

5. Hansard 1812
The edited records of all parliamentary
debates, votes, written ministerial
statements and answers from the Houses
of Commons and Lords since 1812.

6. Followed by:
1832 Reform Act
– Redrew constituencies
– Expanded right to vote
(doubled the
electorate)
1928 Representation of the
People Equal Franchise Act

7. But more recently…
• 1994 code of practice on access to
government information
• 1997 white paper “Your Right to Know”
• 2000 Freedom of Information Act

9. Missing Records :

10. Wasting Public Money:

11. Power of Information Taskforce 2008-09

12. The start of work on data.gov.uk
Objectives
• increase transparency
• improve public services
• release new economic and
social value and growth
• make UK a global hub of skills
in the future of the Web
“So that Government information is accessible and useful for
the widest possible group of people, I have asked Sir Tim
Berners-Lee who led the creation of the World Wide Web, to
help us drive the opening up of access to Government data in
the web over the coming months".
Gordon Brown, 10 June 2009

13. Show Us A Better Way

14. 1st Government Hack Day

15. Defined Open Data:
UNCLASSIFIED
15
Open data is data that can be freely used,
reused and redistributed by anyone for any
purpose.

16. Revised Licensing

20. By May 2010
• Austerity predominant political theme
• Politicians keen to force greater accountability
on public sector (culturally and financially)
• Social media/new technology becoming
mainstream
• Beginning of smartphone revolution
• Had a data portal and had released c100
datasets; some csv’s some pdf’s
• Data hadn’t been checked for
quality/consistency

21. Open Data = Transparency

22. Major Priority for Government
“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.”
David Cameron
May 2010

23. Citizen Consumers
“Transparency Temple”
UNCLASSIFIED
IncreasedAccountability
ImprovedPublicServices
NewEconomic&SocialValue
Open Government
Data Users
Government releasing Open Data

24. Finding Data

25. Mandated PM Commitments
• Names, grades, job titles and annual pay rates for most Senior Civil Servants with salaries above
£150,000 to be published
• Names, grades, job titles and annual pay rates for most Senior Civil Servants and NDPB officials with
salaries higher than the lowest permissible in Pay Band 1 of the Senior Civil Service pay scale
• Organograms for central government departments and agencies that include all staff positions to be
published in a common format
• Names/titles of all Special Advisers, salaries where over Pay Band 1
• NDPB officials earning over £150,000
• Local government officials earning over £150,000
• Central government workforce including temps, consultants, etc.
• Historic COINS spending data to be published online
• New items of central government spending over £25,000 to be published online
• All new central government contracts to be published in full
• All new central government tender documents for contracts over £10,000 to be published on a
single website from September 2010, with this information to be made available to the public free
• New items of local government spending over £500 to be published on a council-by-council basis
• Full information on all DFID international development projects over £500 to be published online
from January 2011, including financial information and project documentation.
• Government departments and agencies should ensure that any information published includes the
underlying data in an open standardised format.
• Publish the energy use of government headquarters in real-time
• New local government contracts and tender documents for expenditure over £500 to be published
in full
• Crime data to be published at a level that allows the public to see what is happening on their
streets
• Value for money calculations of all government websites
• Complete list of all Local Authorities and their contact details.

26. Also
• Every department and Public body must
have an Open Data Strategy
• All departments have had to identify
what data they hold
• Prioritized data that was already in the
public domain in some form
• Have had to redesigning charging
models to make data open
• Built a data request mechanism

27. League Tables of departments
reported to Parliament

28. 28
Looked for data that matters to citizens:

29. Protection of Freedoms Act 2012
(Pt6)
• Information must
released in a
reusable way
• Broadens definition
of “dataset”
• Consolidates
copyright and reuse
guidance
• Defines criteria for
charging for data

30. Quality of Data

31. Quality Issues:

32. Formatting Issues
 Put your data on the Web (any
format)
 Make it available as structured
data (e.g. Excel, CSV, instead of
PDF)
 Use open, standard formats (e.g.
XML, RDF)
 Use URLs to identify things (so
people and machines can point at
your data)
 Link your data to other people’s
data

33. Why 5 Linked Data?
 National digital
infrastructure being
built
 URIs for schools,
roads, bus stops, post
codes, admin
boundaries...
 Some of the data links
across and connects
other data together
 Key data link points
exist

34. This is not easy for government:
UNCLASSIFIED
A presentation on the usability or otherwise of the FCO data.

35. Reusable Data?

36. Handling the concerns of data owners..
“People hug their database, they don't want to
let it go. You have no idea the number of
excuses people come up with to hang onto their
data and not give it to you, even though you've
paid for it as a taxpayer.”
– Tim Berners-Lee
http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html

37. What are we doing about it?
• National Information Infrastructure:
– Ontologies
– Priority datasets (geotags)
• Developing API’s (as well as open data)
• Re-engineering our IT systems to produce relatable
data
• Building awareness of what data is and what
“Open” means
• Mandating publication in Open Document Format
• Working towards csv for all government data
(anything better is a bonus)

38. What difference does having
data make to UK Citizens?

39. Public Services

40. Performance of healthcare providers

41. Performance of law enforcement

42. Performance of individual schools

43. Accountability of Government

44. Who is “government”

45. Where do my taxes go?

46. Is my money being spent well?

47. What do I get for it?
Links to the
documents

49. Releasing Social & Economic
Value

50. Transport
• ~500 Applications
(mobile, web, others)
• ~5000 people involved
in “app industry”
• As a transport project
alone, evaluated by
usual economic
criteria:
ROI = 58:1
• Transport For London
have stopped making
their own apps

51. App Development

52. Crisis Mapping

53. Travel industry

54. Start ups
Pesky People – 999 App for the profoundly deaf

55. What are we doing now?

56. Stimulating Demand from business and citizens

57. Trying to release the data people want

58. Making sure data is truly re-usable and useful

59. Working to ensure Privacy of Personal Data

60. Delivering Incrementally

61. Engaging with Users and teaching Coding

62. Promoting the use of Data

63. To create an Open Data Ecosystem

64. OGP National Action Plans
• Launched 2nd NAP in
October 2013 at OGP
Summit
• Civil Society Assessing
progress
• Beginning to think about
3rd NAP

65. Ongoing Challenges
• Quality & Usability of the data we’re
releasing (and technology we’re using)
• Overcoming fear of releasing
information or engaging (political &
official)
• Educating officials ; cultural change
• Creating informed citizens and active
users/marketplaces

66. The challenge of open government:
“Government ought to be all outside ad
no inside…Everybody knows that
corruption thrives in secret places, avoids
pubic places and we believe it a fair
presumption that secrecy means
impropriety”
― Woodrow Wilson 1912; The New
Freedom

67. Bernard: But surely the citizens of a democracy have a right to
know.
Sir Humphrey: No. They have a right to be ignorant. Knowledge
only means complicity in guilt; ignorance has a certain dignity.
Bernard: But if the Minister wants Open Government?
Sir Humphrey: You just don’t give people what they want if it’s
not good for them. You give Brandy to an alcoholic?

68. Questions?