I do like open data but the recent talk of big data puts me off – implicit in the language, although often inadvertent is the implication that you have to be big to get this stuff working for you. It makes me feel excluded – I am just a little guy with a little company who wants to make a difference in a small community. In fact just like everyone else I’ve met through my community work with Talk About Local. For opendata to deliver on its promise it needs to be open and welcoming to the little guy. Read more
Tag Archive for #opendata
CommsCamp13: Communications unleashed, gender issues and open data
Can communications professionals help reinvent what it means to be an elected representative? If that question strikes you as Sir Humphrey calling the shots in a Yes Minister style scenario, the discussion captured here on video about the role of the 21st century head of communication will be an eye-opener.
“Coach, mentor, leader, trainer, storyteller, data intelligence, listener, enabler, wheeler-dealer, an educator ” the list of roles which the group felt now makes up the modern day ‘comms’ job is daunting, with the rise of digital forms of communication adding ever increasing layers if complexity to the job in hand. Read more
Focus on UK’s open data experiences from Brazil
A delegation from the Brazilian government is in Britain at the moment finding about more about UK’s experiences with open data and the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act.
They are visiting a wide range of people in the UK and went to Manchester to see how the legislative structures we have in place are actually used on the ground and what can be learned about how to frame similar laws and initiatives back in Brazil Read more
Towards a local public information manifesto
For some time now I have held a public appointment at Communities and Local Government in the UK as a member of the Local Public Data Panel, which is part of the Government’s open data machinery. At that panel I tend to bang on about the need for citizen engagement in local data so that people use what you publish, as a counter-point to the endless, publish, publish, publish mantra. I wrote a blog post on this theme that some people liked.
Committees, like Dr Johnson’s dictionary are dull work even when the people on the group are fabulous, as they are here. It helps if every now and then you can get stuff off your chest.
To improve the TOR of the Local Public Data Panel I wrote this Local Public Information Manifesto that was in large part based on frustration formed in years of civic action at the hegemony that the local state, quasi-state and corporate interests have over data when you are trying to get them to listen/change things. One or two other Panel members contributed but I won’t embarrass them here nor by any means say this is the view of the Panel. I present the manifesto below as a draft – if you think you can sign up to it append your name in the comments or suggest amends.
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Draft Local Public Information Manifesto
An informed community needs accurate timely information to make good local decisions. In 2012 it remains challenging for a citizen to find the information they need to take part in local decisions about the public realm. Personal, life changing decisions about schools and social care are shrouded in an information fog, public social issues such as land use planning, the licensing of pubs, clubs, betting shops suffer desperately from not having enough resident involvement. All too often one finds that people just didn’t know about critical developments at a stage when they could have influenced them.
All public bodies use internet-connected IT and 80% of citizens use the internet. Yet the bedraggled paper chitty tied by string to some railings or a bulky document in a library remain pivotal to publishing public information. This might have been acceptable in 1912 but in 2012 it is embarrassingly out of date, undermining Britain’s claim to be an information society.
This manifesto seeks more informed communities, better equipped with basic information to make the tough choices facing people in austerity Britain. By the end of this parliament we think that people across the country should be able to access the basic information held by local public bodies that people need to drive local democracy and help make tough public service choices. We call on local and national public bodies to publish as open data the basic data underpinning critical services in the following areas:
Schools – help third parties provide decent school application information processes – publish data on places, intake and catchment areas
Health – better information to support tough decisions on local social care as local authorities assume responsibility – publish detailed expenditure and performance data on social care and create pro-actively transparent local health and wellbeing boards.
Crime – people able to see that justice is being done in their community on issues they care about. Who is appearing in local courts for local crimes, what happens to them, sentences and when people are being released.
Planning and built environment – citizens can’t get involved if they can’t easily navigate applications and case histories about nearby planning applications. People need to know what is going on near them to contribute to neighbourhood plans on an informed basis. Local planning lists and decisions should be published in real time as open data.
Licensing – citizens need to be equipped with basic information to use new powers to control bars, clubs, pubs, adult venues, gambling venues. Publish as open data applications for all classes of alcohol, entertainment and adult services licences. Also data about the trends and (criminal) behaviour of the licensees and premises.
Environment – inform people’s decisions about levels of pollution in their daily lives so that they can avoid or campaign to change it. Publish pollution levels data from all local monitoring equipment. Bins and recycling collections can often be baroque, publish timetables and services as open data.
Transport – getting more out of largely fixed local transport infrastructure and shrinking services can only be done with better information. Publish local timetables, parking/waiting places, usage rates, subsidy and restrictions as open data.
Often public bodies cite cost and IT complexity as preventing them from putting decent information services online. But in the modern world hard pressed public bodies themselves need no longer present a ‘retail’ service to citizens. They can opt for a much cheaper, almost free option of publishing the underlying data itself or for more complex information an online interface to that data. Then third parties can deliver these information services instead, companies doing this can create jobs and new information services and assets. Companies and civic groups are often much better at telling people data exists than public bodies.
This manifesto is not intended to be exhaustive but we feel that good, modern local authorities and public bodies that desire more citizen engagement will want to do the above and more. A small number already are, the challenge is for all to do this using smart thinking within current budgets.
William Perrin
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As ever this is my own personal views and does not reflect the views of any of my clients etc etc.
UK central government opens up local government to bloggers and local social media
In what should be a big leap forward for local democracy and community web media UK central government is to decree in law that local government meetings must be open to local bloggers, tweeters, community web forums etc.
I am not going to do the journalist trick of re-writing a press notice trying to give the impression it is my own wise words so the whole CLG thing is below.
Some observations -
overall this is a very good thing
it might be a world first, but if it is it reflects the weakness of local transparency in the UK that this has to be directed from Whitehall
this is central government acknowledging that hyperlocal web media is important in local scrutiny and accountability ‘The existing media definition will be broadened to cover organisations that provide internet news thereby opening up councils to local online news outlets. ‘
hopefully this will open up the mysterious world of ‘cabinet local government’ where tight groups meet to make major decisions with no public scrutiny
local social media can really open up council-led meetings in new ways if the chair co-operates (see this piece i did in Islington using a blog, audio boo and storify) and bloggers can lead the way as we see the excellent Ventnor Blog doing on the Isle of Wight.
I do hope that this applies to TfL I would dearly like to attend meetings on cycle safety
local TV with tens of millions of public subsidy for a scant 18 areas in the first round doesn’t get a mention. You can find my evidence on Local TV here.
the caveat ‘remove unnecessary and bureaucratic red tape on forward plans’ needs investigating – plans can be an important part of scrutiny, they give you a fixed target against which to judge subsequent performance.
good to see Chris Taggart feature in the press notice – Openly Local has done much that was regarded as impossible in trying to bring some order and structure to online publishing of council information. Chris is a real hero
it’s a delight to know that Margaret Thatcher once led a move to open up council meetings in the 1960s, it’s just a shame that she didn’t follow through rather harder with expanding FOI in the 1980s when in power.
Here’s the CLG press notice.
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TOWN HALL DOORS UNLOCKED TO SOCIAL MEDIA AND BLOGGERS
New law changes to introduce greater openness and transparency in executive councils meetings will mean all decisions including those affecting budgets and local services will have to be taken in an open and public forum, Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles announced today.
Ministers have put new regulations before Parliament that would come into force next month to extend the rights of people to attend all meetings of a council’s executive, its committees and subcommittees.
The changes will result in greater public scrutiny. The existing media definition will be broadened to cover organisations that provide internet news thereby opening up councils to local online news outlets. Individual councillors will also have stronger rights to scrutinise the actions of their council.
Any executive decision that would result in the council incurring new spending or savings significantly affecting its budget or where it would affect the communities of two or more council wards will have to be taken in a more transparent way as a result.
Crucially councils will no longer be able to cite political advice as justification for closing a meeting to the public and press. In addition any intentional obstruction or refusal to supply certain documents could result in a fine for the individual concerned.
The changes clarify the limited circumstances where meetings can be closed, for example, where it is likely that a public meeting would result in the disclosure of confidential information. Where a meeting is due to be closed to the public, the council must now justify why that meeting is to be closed and give 28 days notice of such decision.
As a consequence of the greater levels of transparency around meetings, the Government is able to remove unnecessary and bureaucratic red tape on forward plans introduced by legislation in 2000.
Eric Pickles said:
“Every decision a council takes has a major impact on the lives of local people so it is crucial that whenever it takes a significant decision about local budgets that affect local communities whether it is in a full council meeting or in a unheard of sub-committee it has got to be taken in the full glare of all the press and any of the public.
“Margaret Thatcher was first to pry open the doors of Town Hall transparency. Fifty years on we are modernising those pioneering principles so that every kind of modern journalists can go through those doors – be it from the daily reporter, the hyper-local news website or the armchair activist and concerned citizen blogger – councils can no longer continue to persist with a digital divide.”
Chris Taggart, of OpenlyLocal.com, which has long championed the need to open council business up to public scrutiny, added:
“In a world where hi-definition video cameras are under £100 and hyperlocal bloggers are doing some of the best council reporting in the country, it is crazy that councils are prohibiting members of the public from videoing, tweeting and live-blogging their meetings.
Notes to Editors
1. The Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Meetings and Access to Information) (England) Regulations 2012 (the 2012 Regulations) will come into force on 10 September 2012. Changes include:
Presumption in favour of openness: In the past councils could cite political advice as justification for closing a meeting to the public and press, or state that decisions being made were not ‘key decisions’. The new regulations create a presumption that all meetings of the executive, its committees and subcommittees are to be held in public (regulation 3) unless a narrowly defined legal exception applies. A meeting will only be held in private if confidential information would be disclosed, or a resolution has been passed to exclude the public because exempt information is likely is be disclosed, or a lawful power is used to exclude the public in order to maintain orderly conduct at the meeting (regulation 4).
- Confidential information is information provided to the council by a Government department upon terms which forbid disclosure to the public or information which statute or a court order prohibits from being disclosed to the public.
- Exempt information is set out in Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972 and it includes information about a person, or information that would reveal their identity, consultations or negotiations relating of labour relations, or information in connection with preventing and detecting crime.
New legal rights for citizen reporters: Local authorities are now obliged to provide reasonable facilities for members of the public to report the proceedings as well as accredited newspapers (regulation 4). This will make it easier for new ‘social media’ reporting of council executive meetings thereby opening proceedings up to internet bloggers, tweeting and hyperlocal news forums.
Holding private meetings: In the past council executives could hold meetings in private without giving public notice. Where a meeting is to be held in private, the executive or committee must provide 28 days notice during which the public may make representations about why the meeting should be held in public. Where the notice requirements for a private meeting and an agreement of the chairman of the relevant overview and scrutiny committee or chairman of the relevant local authority has been obtained, the decision-making body must publish a notice as soon as reasonably practicable explaining why the meeting is urgent and cannot be deferred (regulation 5).
Less red tape for councils: Removing internal bureaucracy introduced by the last Government about ‘key decisions’, quarterly reports and ‘forward plans’. Instead, a document explaining the key decision to be made, the matter in respect of which a decision would be made, the documents to be considered before the decision is made, and the procedures for requesting details of those documents, has to be published (regulations 9).
Special urgent decision: Where it is impossible to meet the publication requirements before a key decision is made and an agreement has been obtained from the chairman of the relevant overview and scrutiny committee or the relevant local authority to make the key decision, the decision maker must publish a notice to explain the reasons why the making of the decision is urgent (regulation 11). Previously no notice was required.
Stronger rights of individual councillors: Where an executive has in its the possession a document that contains materials relating to a business to be discussed at a public meeting, members of the local authority have additional rights to inspect such a document at least five days before the meeting (regulation 16). Previously no timescale existed.
Stronger rights for scrutiny members: Where the executive decides not to release the whole or part of a document to a member of an overview and scrutiny committee as requested by a councillor, it must provide a written statement to explain the reasons for not releasing such document (regulation 17).
Publication requirement: Publication of any notice by a decision-making body or a proper officer; or any document in relation to a key decision or public meeting and background papers must be on the relevant local authority’s website (regulations 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 14, 15, and 21).
1. The Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960 opened up meetings to the public, allowing members of the public and press to attend meetings of certain public bodies including councils. Margaret Thatcher was the backbench MP who championed this as a Private Members Bill.
2. Part 5A of the Local Government Act of 1972 applies to access to meetings and documents of the full council and committees of the councils. It states that ‘duly accredited representatives of newspapers’ should be afforded ‘reasonable facilities’ to attend council meetings ‘for the purpose of reporting proceedings for those newspapers’. It also sets out that for those parts of council meetings that are open to the public, councils are prevented from ejecting members of the public unless they are guilty of disorderly conduct or other ‘misbehaviour’.
3. The Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 provides for greater public access to local authority meetings reports and documents subject to specified confidentiality provisions; to give local authorities duties to publish certain information; and for related purposes.