Local Public Data Panel – fourth meeting 9 September 2010

Other Attendees: Baroness Hanham, Hulya Mustafa, Steve Peters, Julie Wyeth, Verna Chung, Ruth Miller, Mita Saha, Matt Hines, John Flett, Stuart Macleod, Padma Juggapah (minutes) – all CLG.

1 June minutes

 The minutes were agreed.

 Action: Tim Allen/Janet Hughes to map dialogue of councils involved in Local election project for returning officers. Chris Taggart/Tim Allen/Janet Hughes to arrange meeting.

Action: CLG to provide details of dates and granularity on CLG spend – to be discussed with Chris Taggart.

Role of the Panel

The Panel was joined by Baroness Hanham (BH) who expressed full support for the Local Public Data Panel’s work, recognising the importance of their close links with the main Public Sector Transparency Board and Professor Shadbolt’s role as a member of the Board. BH was pleased that over the summer the relationship between the Panel and the Board had been clarified.  The Panel was a highly knowledgeable and effective group focusing on local issues.  Transparency was vital to the government’s ambitions on the Big Society and decentralisation.  Data needed to be accessible by amateurs, not just professionals and it needed to be clear and comparable.  Citizens needed to be able to compare their council’s data with adjacent councils or over time.  Formatting and comparability would therefore be key discussion points going forward.

Strong message that Margaret Eaton, Chair of the LGA, was fully supportive and signed up to the transparency agenda and to supporting local authorities in publishing spend and other data by January 2011. 

Panel suggested the strategy paper should be more ambitious. The final strategy document should be more collaborative and include local authority views. 

Panel members discussed linked data.  Some felt it was not possible to scope out detailed requirements in advance and immediately get the ideal solution; rather the best solutions were based on learning from experience.  Setting minimum standards initially would allow good solutions to evolve. 

Panel members acknowledged that one of the main problems with machine readable data was that it could be confusing for the average citizen. However, there are a growing number of activist citizens around the country who are able to use the data to hold local authorities to account. Students are now using data.gov.uk for research purposes, and it was important to support and increase data literacy in general.

The Panel agreed that the strategy placed too much emphasis on local authority data.  The richest outcome would come from comparing local data held by different bodies.

Panel Chair summed up that this was a journey. Tim Berners-Lee’s 5 star rating system towards fully linked open data was a good guide here. Setting standards would allow the public to better scrutinise. There was a need to be pragmatic without lacking strategic ambition, a view shared by the Public Sector Transparency Board.

Panel ways of working

Panel discussed how different work streams could be taken forward and agreed on working on a ‘task and finish’ basis on some projects.  Panel felt they needed to use CLG resources better to identify policy areas where Panel input could be useful.  Panel considered they also had a role to keep government linked to activism around what data was wanted in terms of local lives and local areas.

The Panel was open to bringing in other expertise on particular projects, whether through ad hoc attendance at Panel, or working groups or through Communities of Practice.

CLG confirmed that there was some programme funding available and the Panel discussed possible funding bids for suitable projects eg., hack days. Sunderland would be interested in holding and hosting a local hack day specifically for harder to reach citizens.  Chris Taggart felt there was work to be done around local government finance accounts.

The Panel agreed that lots could be done with as little as £5k per project, for example, the Isle of Wight has the best hyperlocal blog in the country set up at minimal costs.

Policy Objectives

CLG asks if panel were happy with 3 sections. 

Panel felt that the ambition should be i) to secure private data, ii) to publish all non-private data and iii) to inform citizens what data was held on them.

Panel agreed that mandation was not the only answer and that there was a risk to government policy in that there were too few people using the data.  Data should be accessible to all citizens, not just developers.  Question around how to develop a sense of civic duty and leverage other parts of the community.

Panel acknowledged that there was a need to develop skills and capability in certain Local Government sectors, eg in IT systems, as well as making better use of best practice.

Panel felt FOI requests could be a rich source of new data but needed a consistent, open approach.

Chair wished the document to be an active and living document and re-iterated the need for clear practical imperatives from Ministers.

Action: Hulya to circulate edited strategy document to Panel and investigate uploading as googledocs.

Baroness Hanham left the discussions at this stage and thanked the Panel for an interesting and helpful conversation.

Crime Data

Paper submitted by Janet Hughes in response to the Home Office Consultation around crime data.  JH outlined four main points.

The Panel felt a response endorsed by the Local Public Data Panel would be powerful and would add more weight.

Other Panel members agree that it was good to be involved in these types of consultations.

Panel suggested that Home Office Minister could be a potential data champion.   The direction of travel in this and other areas should be to follow the Public Sector Transparency Board’s Public Data Principles.

Health Data and other policy

There are other similar consultations in the pipeline. Janet Hughes offered to review other such consultations to provide a similar considered response on behalf of the Panel.

There is a shortage of local data in the public domain. A discussion took place around the Whitehall work currently underway around information strategy, data and structural reform.  The question of what would happen to the data collected by quangos and arms length bodies which were to be wound up was raised. 

Panel discussed other key partners and the need for regular contact with them, such as John Pullinger, House of Commons Librarian, and the Chief Scientific Adviser.

Action: CLG/Tim Allen/JH to flag up other consultations in addition to Health in the pipeline/taking place.  JH (or other volunteer)to draft response.

 £500 guidance

Panel discussed Local Spending Guidance paper from Chris Taggart.  The document followed HM Treasury’s guidance on central government commitments to publish spend data. There was still work to be done around how to get the data from local authority accounts to be published in this form.  The guidance provides a broad outline of what should be done in the first instance.  The guidance was expected to evolve over time and be tweaked to include new content as it became available. The Panel agreed that the guidance should go on data.gov.uk as a blog for comments.

Spotlight on Spend

There was an energetic conversation around this issue over the summer.  It appeared that Spotlight on Spend was displaying local data but not in a sufficiently open fashion.  A sub-meeting of members of the Local Public Data Panel was arranged, chaired by Professor Shadbolt, with Luke Spikes from Spikes Cavell, the company working with local authorities on Spotlight on Spend.  The Chair found the meeting very encouraging and from the 7^th August, the local authority raw spending data was available on Spotlight on Spend under an open and general licence. 

Looking Ahead

Panel asked when Procurement guidance will be issued for the publication of contractual obligation by January 2011.  OGC guidance on ICT contracts and all tenders had been issued and the Cabinet Office would share this with the Panel. 

Licensing protocol was also another key factor. A re-usable open government licence which could extend to the public sector was being developed.

The Panel agreed to meet every 6 weeks.

Actions: Secretariat to identify dates and circulate to Panel.

By Local Data Panel

Attachments (6)

Spotlight on Spend meeting.doc(101.5 KB)

100906_Local Public Data Panel Agenda 9 Sept final.doc(37.5 KB)

Local Public Data Panel - 9 Sept_Minutes_FINAL.doc(104.5 KB)

Local Public Data Panel - 1 June MINUTE-ACTIONS final.doc(108.5 KB)

Draft Local Public Data Panel response to the Home Office consultation draft v2.doc(58 KB)

10-09-09 - Transparency Paper PSTB.doc(107 KB)