UK: Open Government report
The UK Centre for Technology Policy Research (CTPR) has published a report titled: OPEN GOVERNMENT some next steps for the UK. The 53-page report sets out the importance of open government and how this can be implemented in the UK. The report makes reference to a range of initiatives taken forward under the previous UK Government and administration.
The paper is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England and Wales. More details online
The announcement states:
“The paper aims to serve two purposes: to establish a more widespread understanding of the significance of open government, and to provide a clear pathway towards its delivery in the UK.
By open government, we mean the commitment to ensure that all aspects of the way that government and public services are administered and operated are open to effective public scrutiny and oversight. Open government will also enable public employees to work in smarter, better informed ways, working from the frontline upwards rather than the remote centre downwards.
We believe that there is a natural potential alignment between our UK system of government, our long tradition of liberal democracy, and what technology now makes possible. But it will take a strong political will and the implementation of a series of practical steps to get there.
This is, after all, not about our government and our public services as they currently exist. But how they would be if we were to design them now. It is in that spirit that this paper aims to add momentum and support to make open government pervasive, routine and sustained by offering a series of recommendations that we believe will help advance and embed the necessary cultural and technical changes required to help make open government an embedded reality in the UK.
Let us know what you think. In particular, as well as the recommended next steps for central government, we are keen to start a more widespread debate about what open government means for local and regional government. If there is sufficient interest, we will extend this work into these other areas.”
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Pages 46 and 47 of the report state:
“OPEN LICENSING
There remain a variety of restrictions on the use of public data, notably in areas such as the postcode database and geospatial information. Public data needs to become available free of charge using open licensing. Keeping it closed or chargeable inhibits innovation and fails to recognise the sovereignty of the citizen over information and data for which they have already paid.
The UK has made some good progress, but these key areas remain that require reform. For example on the OPSI site, where public data licenses can be obtained, there are a whole series of exceptions identified:
“The exceptions to this are information and data produced by those government departments, agencies and trading funds that license Crown copyright information they originate under a delegation of authority granted by the Controller of HMSO. See the Information Fair Trader Scheme (IFTS) Members page for details of these organisations.”
These restrictions undermine the move towards open government. They need to be replaced by an open approach to licensing that encourages innovation.
· Recommendation: mandate open licensing as the default government licence. The existing OPSI review of licensing must be expedited and a timescale committed to where UK uses of information, processes and related tasks become freely available within a harmonised licensing framework.
Where trading fund income is the blocker to making public information open, as we have mentioned earlier in this paper, government should consider redirecting some of its marketing and PR spend to address the trading fund shortfall in order to make such information freely available”
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