How managers should respond to Coalition Government policies on open data and transparency: a new briefing from Socitm

Socitm has published a new briefing for local authority managers advising them how to respond to new requirements placed on them by the Coalition Government around open data and transparency.

From January, councils will be required to publish data on all contracts and spending over £500, as well as job titles, salaries and expenses of senior officials. Pressure to publish more of their data is certain to follow.

Socitm's new briefing Open data and transparency: no turning back fills in the political background to this development, looks at potential benefits for the public and for the performance of public sector organisations, and makes suggestions about how councils should approach a development that it suggests could be as disruptive to traditional public sector ways of doing things as the internet has been for media businesses.

The briefing explains that the coalition government believes transparency will reduce public sector expenditure and expose waste. 'Armchair auditors' will get access to the information needed to challenge spending decisions. Suppliers able to see the value of existing contracts will be better able to provide competitive bids for new business, while the exposure might embarrass some incumbent providers. This could, says the briefing, make public sector work marginally less attractive to commercial providers and there may be challenges from suppliers on grounds of commercial confidentiality.

Releasing other types of data will enable creation of useful applications in the mould of Patient Opinion, and allow local activists to communicate information about performance of public services in a similar way that sites such as TripAdvisor and SeatGuru allow consumers to comment upon and discuss commercial products and services. This is turn may well translate into local pressure for improvements in efficiency and/or effectiveness.

The briefing also makes the link between the needs of the transparency agenda and the wider need for public sector organisations to improve the quality of their data and information management systems to enable for IT-enabled efficiency. Good quality information underpins every approach to saving and using information to survive austerity is the key agenda with transparency a by-product.

For many councils, says the briefing, moving to open data will expose significant flaws in existing data - overlaps, omissions, ambiguity, and duplication. These have been there for many years, but it is only now, when councils seek to become more joined up, more efficient, and more transparent, that flaws will become more obvious and their impact more evident in terms of wasted cost and resource.

'Organisations will need to improve corporate understanding of open data issues, and to promote a transparency culture' says Chris Head, author of the briefing. 'Government mandate to publish specified data is not enough: there should be a pervasive culture of openness throughout the organisation, and this should go hand in hand with a more mature approach to information management, leading directly to significant efficiency gains.'

Open data is one of the topics on the agenda for Socitm 2010 this year's running of Socitm's annual conference that will take place 10-12 October in Brighton.

Open data and transparency: no turning back is available to Socitm Insight subscribers and can be downloaded from the Socitm website.

Further information

Chris Head, Socitm Insight Associate, Tel: 07880 748299; Email: chris.head@socitm.net

Vicky Sargent, Socitm Press Office, Tel: 07726 601139, Email: vicky.sargent@socitm.net