Transparency Board Minutes - 24th January 2012

TRANSPARENCY BOARD

Minutes of the meeting held on 24 January 2012 at the Cabinet Office:

Transparency Board Members

Officials (regular attendees)

Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office (Chair)

Kitty von Bertele (Cabinet Office)

Professor Nigel Shadbolt

Olivia Burman (Cabinet Office)

Tom Steinberg

David Barnes (Cabinet Office)

Andrew Stott 

Peter Lawrence (Cabinet Office)

Dr Rufus Pollock

Tim Kelsey (Cabinet Office)

Ed Parkes (Cabinet Office)

Ministers (Presenting):

Lord McNally (Minister of Justice)

Officials Presenting:

Nick Herbert, Minster of State for Policy and Criminal Justice

David Frazer (Department of Works and Pensions)

Apologies:

Iain Bell (Ministry of Justice)

Rachel Fentem (No 10)

Martin Jones (Ministry of Justice)

Sophia Oliver (Cabinet Office)

Glenn Preston (Ministry of Justice)

Tim Berners-Lee

Rebecca Bradfield (Home Office)

Rohan Silva (No 10) 

Gareth Redmond (Home Office)

Department of Works and Pensions Update

David Frazer, Director of Information and Head of Profession for Statistics (Department of Works and Pensions), Gave a presentation on Transparency and Open Data within DWP. The following key points were made:

Current Position – What data and how do we make it available

• The Department of Works and Pensions holds data on its clients that covers most of the UK population. This has been used to create datasets for analysis and to support operational activities. This underlying data is used to support the delivery of services including: The target and combat of fraud and error for DWP Local Authority Customers

1. Supporting wider government initiatives
2. Supporting the statistical work of other departments

Opportunities and Progress

• In collaboration with the Cabinet Office, The Department of Works and Pensions has seen an appetite from the private sector for more flexible access to data and government using a common format for datasets

1. DWP has fulfilled the commitments made in the Growth Review.
2. The Welfare Sector Transparency Board has been established and will meet in February 2012.
3. The Department is in the process of designing a Universal Credit ICT system which will replace tax credits and help support people in or out of work. The system will be designed to enable transparency and open data, although subject to appropriate security measures.
4. Ministerial approval and the appropriate funding have been given for the implementation of a new flexible tabulation tool. This will lead to information becoming more accessible in a user friendly format, including visualisation, mapping and output to other formats.

In discussion the Transparency Board made the following points:

(1) it was important that early progress was made on defining what open data would be available from the Universal Credit ICT system so that it could be confirmed that the design was sufficiently robust to collect and publish data easily and without extra costs.  It was essential for the design not only to enable the publication of data later but to build in the capability from the start.

(2) it was important that the “tabulation tool” had an API through which tabulations could be requested programmatically; and the API should allow the requesting process to specify a range of useful output formats of its choice (eg JSON, XML, CSV).  Each possible table should have a specific URL which could be “bookmarked”, communicated or used as a reference, as well as forming the basis for the API.  A number of existing tabulation tools in Government assumed a human user and were difficult or impossible to script or bookmark.

Action: DWP to consider the points raised by the Transparency Board and respond in writing with a plan setting out how these points would be covered.

Due: May

Action:  Invite a member of the Welfare Sector Transparency Board to present at a future meeting of the Public Sector Transparency Board.

Due: May

Crime and Justice Update

 Nick Herbert, The Minster of State for Police and Criminal Justice, introduced the Crime and Justice Transparency presentation. The Minister expressed his support for the Transparency programme and its importance in relation to crime and justice. Furthermore, the privacy debate on anonymisation is an area which is causing issues amongst the accuracy of crime location data.

 

Iain Bell, Chief Statistician (Ministry of Justice) and Gareth Redmond, Head of Police Transparency Unit (Home Office) informed the Board of the current progress in opening up crime and justice data. The mapping of crime and anti social behaviour at a street level is available on police.uk; re-offending data for prisons, anonymised data on adult sentences and court level performance information is available on the open.justice.gov.uk website.

Key points from the presentation:

• There has been an overwhelming amount of positive feedback through media coverage, especially at a local community level.
• 4,000 pieces of feedback have been received from users of the Police.uk system
• There have been favourable news items in mainstream and specialist media
• Positive qualitative feedback has been received from individuals visiting the Open Justice site
• 84% of crime outcomes can be mapped. However, this does not include all levels of crime e.g. low level ‘anti social behaviour’ 

The Crime and Justice sector will be developing the following over the next year: 

• The provision of more detailed crime and Anti Social Behaviour data January 2012
• Crime and Justice mapping, expected in May 2012
• Further align and link the Police.uk and open.justice.gov.uk websites.
• Explore setting up a data laboratory service
• Ongoing discussions taking place between the Crime and Justice Sector Board, Court Service and Ministry of Justice about the feasibility of transparency of court listings

Glenn Preston Deputy Director, Information and Devolution, (Ministry of Justice) lastly notified the board that there are two new EU Data instruments forthcoming that have a bearing on transparency. These are the revision to the EU PSI Directive and the revision/replacement of the EU Data Protection Directive.

The Board expressed their thanks to Rebecca Bradfield for her immense contribution to the success of the transparency agenda through her role in police.uk and wished in her further success in her new role.

Action: Cabinet Officials to meet Ministry of Justice regarding the EU Directive

Due: End of March

Close

• The Transparency Board will host an offline session with Tim Kelsey to update them on the programme.

Tim Kelsey, Executive Director of Transparency and Open Data for the UK Government, (Cabinet Office) thanked the Board for their contribution.