UK Ministerial messages

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Posted by ChrisCorbin on 15 Oct 2008

London: 14 October 2008

It is rare that an event about public sector information involves two Ministers but that is exactly what was scheduled for the Unlocking the Potential of Public Sector Information Conference that took place in London on the 14 October 2008. The plan was for Ministers to mingle with the PSI Stakeholders over lunch. In the event only one Minister could attend due to the Ministry of Justice Minister Michael Will’s MP being called away by the Prime Minister. Michael Wills holds within his portfolio the policy responsibilities for the re-use of Public Sector Information, Freedom of Information, Data protection (Privacy) and the national archives.

Tom Watson MP the Parliamentary Secretary at the UK Cabinet Office who has the Power of information initiative within his portfolio positively enthused about Public Sector Information and the policy developments that are underway in his presentation to the conference. The Minister had a number of key messages, which included amongst others:

The Power of information Task Force was making good progress and was clearly demonstrating the need for change across government and within the public sector as a whole;
The number of Ministers within the Cabinet that positively supported the PSI agenda and the emerging PSI policy actions that would lead to changes was steadily increasing;
The reaction to the Show us a Better Way initiative has been positive with over 450 entries, with over 2000 votes so far cast. The submissions clearly demonstrated that innovation and creativity based on the re-use of public sector for both non-commercial and commercial purposes was present and this underpinned the Power of Information Report. The application areas covered the key policy areas related to Education, Health and Crime.
It was time for the IT industry that supplied the public sector to take note of the changes and that the solutions asked for by the public sector and offered and delivered by the IT sector needed to be agile and nimble.
The actions taken by OPSI to maximise the use of Crown Copyright materials need to be applied across all the public sector information domains and that Creative Commons Licences perhaps have a role as is being demonstrated in other parts of the world.
The Trading Fund model was sound but it predates the information society changes and it was clear that a change was needed and the current review of Trading Funds will be completed in the near future.
We should learn from the lessons of history.

The Minister concluded with the statement that: “Things are going to change quickly”.