Transparency Board Minutes - 15th November 2011

TRANSPARENCY BOARD

Minutes of the meeting held on 15 November at the Cabinet Office:

Welcome and Introductions

The MCO Chair welcomed all attendees.

Open Data and Official Statistics, Office for National Statistics

Guy Goodwin, Director of Population, Health and Regional Analysis, Office for National Statistics, and Jason Bradbury, Deputy Director, National Statistician’s Office, UK Statistics Authority provided background to the current work of Official Statistics.  This covered the positioning of Official Statistics, their characteristics and a current picture of their statistical releases; please see attached presentation. 

In discussion the following points were made:  

• It would be helpful to consider the ‘privacy and jigsaw effect’ point in greater detail at a later Board meeting to ensure that appropriate anonymisation techniques were understood and used, and that data was presented in a way  that was still useful. 
• Recognition of the challenge in moving up accessibility scale due to IT platform barriers; and recognition of the skills gaps in creating open data which exists across government as a whole.
• The GSS community was the model for skills in extracting the utility of data across government and the public sector, and as such should be the lead for the promotion of these skills in a roll out to the wider public sector.
• A desire for GSS to help by establishing standard 4* definitions for GSS standard data categories, e.g. geographies.
• The need for producers around government to move from creating “table builder capability” (inflexible and often not open format) to consistent URLs that can be linked to over time (enabling higher levels of accessibility and re-use). GG supported this view and noted the GSS was heading in that direction.    
• ONS had published Consumer Prices and Retail Prices microdata for the first time in response to an FOI request, made by an individual; with transparency in mind made this available via its website for all to re-use.  The information was published to a good level of detail and would now be published routinely. 

Action: Office for National Statistics to forward a detailed case study of this Consumer Prices and Retail Prices microdata publication to the Transparency Board

Due: January

The Minister thanked the Office for National Statistics for the ongoing work. 

Update on the Public Data Corporation

The MCO introduced the Public Data Corporation discussion with a reminder of the context and with reference to the discussion at the October Transparency Board.  He said it was key that PDC developments did not endanger the Exchequer revenue or capital, and that the assets remained as investable entities.  He highlighted the need to avoid negative effects for the Transparency agenda, explaining that the Growth Review would be published shortly, with a chapter on Open Data, and what was said on the PDC was crucial to how the community responds to Open Data.  

Stephen Lovegrove, Shareholder Executive CEO then provided an update to the Board.  He explained that the discussions between officials had the potential to create a structure, split between the Public Data Group and the Data Strategy Board, with a more enforceable nexus.  This would represent an ongoing journey for public data sharing, rather than the end point. 

The Transparency Board asked SL to confirm specifically the Day One package, and to explain the relationship between the Data Strategy Board (DSB) and the Public Data Group (PDG).  

• The Transparency Board were reassured on the significance of the data to be released. On hearing more detail, the negotiating leads were congratulated for their commitment and hard work in reaching agreement.  
• SL acknowledged the relationship between the Data Strategy Board and the Public Data Group was still in discussion. The Transparency Board encouraged the Shareholder Executive to diffuse anxiety by clearly stating the functionality and the drivers for the Data Strategy Board, through for example, basic terms of reference.  

Shareholder Executive would address further the governance proposals before the publication of the Growth Review.  The Transparency Board sought assurance that the Data Strategy Board would maintain control; otherwise it would be unable to effect decision making and change.  The MCO and Director of Transparency would continue to provide strong direction in the ongoing preparations. 

The Board mentioned the possibility of using sunset clauses to manage big contracts to their end, and so manage efficiencies.

The MCO and the Board thanked SL for his update.

Update on Data.gov.uk

The Head of data.gov.uk presented on the user experience of the website to date, and proposed developments to enhance the site’s core functions. It was noted that data.gov.uk met some of the needs for a specific technical user group and some of the needs for the general public, but this was a difficult balance to strike.  

In discussion the following points were made:

• Data.gov.uk should remain the single point of access to public sector data.
• It’s worthwhile remembering that no-one had done this before with government data so the functions and user interface would continue to evolve to ensure the highest degree of usefulness.
• Whatever changes were made should continue to encourage the public sector to make datasets available, without specific data quality standards, which may provide a perverse incentive.  It was anticipated all datasets would improve in time. 
• To understand how data.gov.uk was used by both technical and general users, it would be necessary to analyse the ‘long tail’, the breadth of usership, and consider trends.
• Data validation at point of entry was vital, but it was equally important that data was updated, and updated regularly to continue to meet the terms of the PM’s commitments.
• Broken or old datasets should be actively targeted to avoid ‘data rotting’.  One simple way would be to straightforwardly publish any links that are broken on the site itself.
• Serendipitous browsing by an expert audience would be a welcome feature of the site, for example ensuring a developer could interrogate and segment the data in a number of different ways.
• It would be very valuable to know not only which datasets were downloaded but with what intention, and what were the outcomes. Ultimately it was hoped that data.gov.uk would promote economic growth, so all potential case studies would be useful.

Conclusion

The meeting concluded with a brief summary of the key issues.   Tim Kelsey, Director of Transparency, thanked the Board for their contribution on behalf of the Minister.