An open approach will secure trust

Friday, July 03, 2009

A Conservative shadow minister has called for a government of "digital natives" that will ensure freely accessible data.

Adam Afriyie, the shadow science and innovation minister, has warned MPs from all parties that the next generation of voters were "born digital". Therefore, he has asked if the country is able to have a government of "digital natives" too.

He warned delegates at the Guardian Activate conference that new technologies "will make the man in Whitehall redundant". He said a Conservative government was committed to using technology to give people more power over their lives and to scrutinise and choose public services.

"In the digital age, we can empower individuals by ending the information imbalance between citizen and state. We can improve access to government data. And we can stop the expansion of the centralised, authoritarian database state," he said.

Afriyie told the conference that the Tories had already announced steps to "put information in people's hands". These included publishing every item of government spending over £25,000 and requiring local government to publish performance information in standard data formats.

"We want to make it easy to identify what government is spending your money on. This kind of data release can unleash a new generation of online services – a kind of Theyworkforyou for local government," he added.

Afriyie also promised reform in the business of government data trading. In his speech he suggested three ideas to reform the system, which is predominantly controlled by the Ordnance Survey and is criticised widely for the amount of publicly available data it will charge for. He called for a more independent commissioner or regulator of government policy to be appointed, to better drive the process of data; the spreading of best practice to local government through standard data formats and a report into the future of data trading to enable a debate about its future.

The Tory MP added that it was ironic that the Sharedholder Executive report, which looks into opening access to government data, is closed to the public.

In a final warning to delegates, Afriyie said blogging, twittering and social networking cannot clean up politics on their own.

"These are mediums for exchange. What matters is the information we deliver through them," he said.

"Do we embrace the new culture of openness, transparency and interactivity? Do we respond as if we, too, were 'born digital'? Or do we stick with the same clumsy, controlling tactics of a tired political system?

"In our 'monitored' democracy, I happen to believe that an open approach is the best way to secure public trust."