A new government website called Your Freedom was launched today, offering members of the public the opportunity to voice their ideas and comments to reduce pointless regulation and unnecessary bureaucracy. The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg explained how this provides a real chance for the public to influence government policy:

It’s a totally new way of making policy. A totally new way of putting you in charge.

Announcing the initiative on his YouTube channel, Clegg encouraged the public to get involved and tell the government if they feel their rights have been infringed :

Be demanding of your liberty. Be insistent about your rights.

Every time you have had to fill out three versions of the same form, tell us about it. Every time you have felt snooped on by the state, tell us about it. Every unnecessary law, every mind-numbing rule, every time your rights have been infringed – now is the time to tell us about it.

Public input

The Your Freedom project asks citizens three questions:

• Which current laws would you like to remove or change because they restrict your civil liberties?

• Which regulations do you think should be removed or changed to make running your business or organisation as simple as possible?

• Which offences do you think we should remove or change and why?

In his video address Clegg cautioned that the government would not be able to respond to every suggestion – the site already crashed due to heavy traffic, and received 2,000 ideas in the first day  – but he promised that every comment would at least be read.

The site explains that its part of the Programme for Government and its aim to ‘create a more open and less intrusive society through the restoration of Britain’s traditions of freedom and fairness’. The site allows the public to submit, comment on, or vote for ideas on how to “free our society of unnecessary laws and regulations – both for individuals and businesses.”

Users of the site will be able to comment on and rate their favourite ideas and relevant departments will then respond to the most popular workable ideas.:

Your ideas will inform government policy and some of your proposals could end up making it into bills we bring before Parliament to change the law.

So if there are any laws or regulations you’d like us to do away with, then submit your idea. If you see ideas here already that you like the look of, then rate them and get them moved up the list. And if there’s more you’d like to say, then talk to others in the comments section for each proposal.

The views expressed through the site will be taken into account in the Freedom Bill later this year.

Criticism

The site has already received a wide range of ideas, including as Simon Jeffery notes, calls to legalise cannabis and magic mushrooms. These topics also appeared prominently in US Open Government dialogue last year, but are unlikely to be seriously considered by a Conservative led government.

Clegg’s claims that this initiative represents “a totally new way of making policy”, however, could be countered by Labour’s highly successful Downing Street petition website launched in 2006. It is described as the:

largest non-partisan democracy site by volume of users ever, with over 8m signatures from over 5m unique email addresses, representing something like 10% of the entire UK population.

Jeffery notes some cynicism about the site launch on twitter:

When @GdnPolitics asked its Twitter followers what they thought about the Clegg initiative, replies came back along the lines of “I’m disappointed. I thought it was going to be a campaign to liberate Clegg from this ridiculous pseudo-coalition” or “FREE THE SHEFFIELD ONE“. When the question was re-phrased, people were still cynical. “A few token gestures to compensate for the coming pain, always goes down well…reminds me of the dentist’s lollipop,” said one.

This month has now seen the coalition’s launch two interesting online exercises – this, and the one asking public sector workers for ideas on ways to reduce government spending. Your Freedom seeks to build on the Conservative election pledge to try to open up the legislative process through providing citizens with an easy means to input into proposed policy. This is not without risks, however.  Ideas on legalising soft drugs are already some of the most popular suggestions on the site. If these prove to generate the most comments and approval, then the Government’s response will be an interesting test of how to manage online citizen feedback where diverges with government policy.

Further reading:

• Your Freedom
• Guardian article on Your Freedom launch
• ‘is [Your Freedom] the silliest new govt website or the most inspired?’
• BBC Newsnight discussion on Your Freedom

In David Cameron’s first podcast as British Prime Minister he outlined plans to make Government more transparent and allow people to hold ministers and public services to account.

One of the central themes of the podcast was that his government would be one that “gives power away to people instead it taking it from them.” He explained how a big part of this was providing the public with more information about government and especially how and where it spends its money (1:50 – 2:16):

It’s your money, your government, you should know what’s going on.

So we’re going to rip off that cloak of secrecy and extend transparency as far and as wide as possible. By bringing information out into the open, you’ll be able to hold government and public services to account. You’ll be able to see how your taxes are being spent. Judge standards in your local schools and hospitals. Find out just how effective the police are at fighting crime in your community.

Public Spending information

Cameron went on to explain how transparency could help “re-build trust in our politics”, through making politicians more accountable for their spending decisions. Analogous to this he previewed the release of details of “public spending over the past 12 months, information about hospital infections, and some of the salaries of senior officials in government.”

He warned, however, that the information would not be perfect, not always in the most convenient format or free from mistakes. Nevertheless, his view was:

I don’t want to hang around making sure everything is perfect – I want to get on with it, to make a start on this transparency revolution that we’re planning.

In time, I want our government to be one of the most open and transparent in the world.

Following on from the podcast, the Prime Minister sent a stark letter to all British government departments. It began with a stated commitment to hold public bodies to account, and ensure value for money in public spending:

Greater transparency across Government is at the heart of our shared commitment to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account; to reduce the deficit and deliver better value for money in public spending; and to realise significant economic benefits by enabling businesses and non-profit organisations to build innovative applications and websites using public data.

The Government must set new standards for transparency, and our Coalition Programme for Government sets out a number of specific commitments. The Government’s initial transparency commitments are set out below, alongside deadlines for publication. Limited exemptions on national security and personal privacy grounds will be permitted.

The commitments include:

• Historic Combined Online Information System (COINS) spending data to be published online in June 2010. – (Released on 4th June)
• All new central government ICT contracts to be published online from July 2010.
• All new central government lender documents for contracts over £10,000 to be published on a single website from September 2010, with this information to be made available to the public free of charge.
• New items of central government spending over £25,000 to be published online from November 2010.
• All new central government contracts to be published in full from January 2011.
• Full information on all DFID international development projects over £500 to be published online from January 2011, including financial information and project documentation.

Along with this he announced how this spending transparency would relate to local government:

• New items of local government spending over £500 to be published on a council-by-council basis from January 2011 – (however, not forced by law).
• New local government contracts and tender documents for expenditure over £500 to be published in full from January 2011.

The priority attached to this was highlighted with the request to all departments to take “immediate action to meet this deadline for data transparency”:

Given the importance of this agenda, the Deputy Prime Minister and I would be grateful if departments would take immediate action to meet this timetable for data transparency, and to ensure that any data published is made available in an open format so that it can be re-used by third parties. From July 2010, government departments and agencies should ensure that any information published includes the underlying data in an open standardised format.

Of course, the release of the datasets specified in the Coalition Programme is just the beginning of the transparency process. In advance of introducing any necessary legislation to effect our Right to Data proposals, public requests to departments for the release of government datasets should be handled in line with the principles underpinning those proposals: a presumption in favour of transparency, with all published data licensed for free reuse.

Some journalists have likened this spirit of online transparency and the “Right to Data proposals” for government-held datasets, as akin to the US Public Online Information Act (POIA) where “public means online” is set as an operating principle for government.

Lifting the Government Spending “Cloak of secrecy”

Late last week, the government enacted Cameron’s pledge to release COINS spending data, and published the entire contents of the Treasury spending database. This documented where public money comes from, what it is spent on for every financial year from 2005/06 to 2009/10.

It’s a complicated set of data which the government has admitted needs ‘some degree of technical competence’ to make use of. In this vein they’ve asked the Open Knowledge Foundation to help make it ‘more accessible,’ and have also promised ‘more accessible formats’ and user-friendly subsets by August.

The datasets can be downloaded from data.gov.uk, or analysed through the Guardian’s data-explorer.

Making sense of the data

Charles Arthur, the Guardian’s technology editor explained how we now need people to make sense of this data and to explore its trends and intricacies:

Now what is needed is people who can make it make sense for the rest of us; we have the transparency but need lenses to bring out the detail.

It’s crucial for citizens to find ways to examine and interpret the data; otherwise it may as well be  – as David Cameron says – “locked away in a vault marked sort of private for the eyes of ministers and officials only”.

We need data.gov.uk/dataset/coins to pass the ‘Mumsy’ test, so citizens can do their own investigations on subjects such as general government spending on consultants, or specified towards a particular agency.

Open data activist David Eaves sums up the challenge going forward:

We need a data-literate citizenry, not just a small elite of hackers and policy wonks. And the best way to cultivate that broad-based literacy is not to release in small or measured quantities, but to flood us with data. To provide thousands of niches that will interest people in learning, playing and working with open data. But more than this we also need to think about cultivating communities where citizens can exchange ideas as well as involve educators to help provide support and increase people’s ability to move up the learning curve.

His call for a data-literate citizenry is one of the reasons we need a massive release of open data, and also an encouragement and incentives for coders to share ideas and skills on how to use and engage with government data (my emphasis):

It is worth remembering: We didn’t build libraries for an already literate citizenry. We built libraries to help citizens become literate. Today we build open data portals not because we have a data or public policy literate citizenry, we build them so that citizens may become literate in data, visualization, coding and public policy.

[...] But smart governments should not only rely on small groups of developers to make use of open data. Forward-looking governments – those that want an engaged citizenry, a 21st-century workforce and a creative, knowledge-based economy in their jurisdiction – will reach out to universities, colleges and schools and encourage them to get their students using, visualizing, writing about and generally engaging with open data. Not only to help others understand its significance, but to foster a sense of empowerment and sense of opportunity among a generation that could create the public policy hacks that will save lives, make public resources more efficient and effective and make communities more livable and fun.

When we think of libraries, we often just think of a building with books.  But 19th century mattered not only because they had books, but because they offered literacy programs, books clubs, and other resources to help citizens become literate and thus, more engaged and productive. Open data catalogs need to learn the same lesson. While they won’t require the same centralized and costly approach as the 19th century, governments that help foster communities around open data, that encourage their school system to use it as a basis for teaching, and then support their citizens\’ efforts to write and suggest their own public policy ideas will, I suspect, benefit from happier and more engaged citizens, along with better services and stronger economies.

The release of such large amounts of government data represents the beginning of the journey, not the end. The presumption of openness in relation to spending data, represents a sea change in the government’s relationship with the public, and how it wants to structure the debate on government expenditure.

These are small steps, but they’ll only make a big difference if the government utilities these resources as a catalyst towards ensuring citizens can become literate in data, visualization and coding. Ensuring the data is released in open standardised formats (as COINs data has been), allows newspapers and other organisations to create user friendly interfaces to interrogate the data, and will allow for the creation of new apps (check Alpine Interactive’s great visualisation app, and Dharmafly’s Gov expenditure app) and a more data-literate citizenry to emerge.

David Cameron noted how “People will be the masters. Politicians the servants. And that’s the way it should be”. I for one agree, and the release of such data enforces this mantra.

For more check:

• Guardian live-blog on the release of COINs data
• Guardian COINS data-explorer
• Charles Arthur on making sense of COINs data
• COINS data release: The 10 things we found out
• Tech Weekly Podcast with comment from Tom Watson MP on the release of COINs data (25:29 – 34:34)
  
• Francis Maude – Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General – on Opening up government to scrutiny
• COINs analysis appplication (rosslynanalytics)
• COINs on data.gov.uk
• Programme for Goverment (Transparency)

Earlier today, David Cameron and Nick Clegg unveiled their joint plans for government, which they say will  create the “radical” change the UK needs.

The joint Programme for Government attempts to combine the best of both Conservative and Liberal Democrat election manifestos.

The coalition partners said it represents a programme for five years of partnership government driven by the values freedom, fairness and responsibility:

“We believe that it can deliver radical, reforming government, a stronger society, a smaller state, and power and responsibility in the hands of every citizen. Great change and real progress lie ahead”

Coalition Programme

Transparency

The coalition agreement devotes a whole section to government transparency. It says how important it is for government to open the doors of public bodies to ensure they are held accountable for their actions and spending. The importance of setting government data free is also recognised as a catalyst towards “enabling businesses and non-profit organisations to build innovative applications and websites”.

The coalition pledges are taken primarily from the Conservative party manifesto, but it also includes election promises from the Liberal Democrats. The pledges include

• We will require public bodies to publish online the job titles of every member of staff and the salaries and expenses of senior officials paid more than the lowest salary permissible in Pay Band 1 of the Senior Civil Service pay scale, and organograms that include all positions in those bodies. - Conservative manifesto pledge
• We will require anyone paid more than the Prime Minister in the centrally funded public sector to have their salary signed off by the Treasury. - Conservative manifesto pledge
• We will regulate lobbying through introducing a statutory register of lobbyists and ensuring greater transparency. - Lib Dem manifesto pledge
• We will also pursue a detailed agreement on limiting donations and reforming party funding in order to remove big money from politics. - Lib Dem manifesto pledge (although not capped at £10,000 as in their manifesto)
• We will strengthen the powers of Select Committees to scrutinise major public appointments. - Conservative manifesto pledge
• We will introduce new protections for whistleblowers in the public sector. - Conservative election pledge
• We will take steps to open up government procurement and reduce costs; and we will publish government ICT contracts online. - Conservative manifesto pledge
  
• We will create a level playing field for open- source software and will enable large ICT projects to be split into smaller components. – Conservative manifesto pledge (“Better” IT procurement though utilising open-source software was also a Lib Dem pledge)
• We will require full, online disclosure of all central government spending and contracts over £25,000. – Conservative manifesto pledge
• We will create a new ‘right to data’ so that government-held datasets can be requested and used by the public, and then published on a regular basis. - Conservative manifesto pledge
• We will require all councils to publish meeting minutes and local service and performance data. – While not explicitly stated in the Conservative manifesto, it in the spirit of their overall aim to ensuring ‘people have a right to government data thus making the performance of the state more transparent.’
• We will require all councils to publish items of spending above £500, and to publish contracts and tender documents in full. - Conservative manifesto pledge
• We will ensure that all data published by public bodies is published in an open and standardised format, so that it can be used easily and with minimal cost by third parties. - Conservative manifesto pledge

“Our political system is broken”

Along with the pledges on transparency the government also commits to “fundamental political reform”. This was a key Liberal Democrat demand, and the statement below seems highly influenced by their perspective of the UK electoral system. While they won almost a quarter of the overall vote, that earned them only 9 percent of the seats in Parliament:

The Government believes that our political system is broken. We urgently need fundamental political reform, including a referendum on electoral reform, much greater co-operation across party lines, and changes to our political system to make it far more transparent and accountable.

There are many other pledges on political reform, but one of the most participatory in terms of civic engagement is the the plan to ‘introduce a new ‘public reading stage’ for bills. This is intended to give the public an opportunity to comment on proposed legislation online. Along with this there will be a dedicated ‘public reading day’ within a bill’s committee stage where those comments will be debated by the committee scrutinising the bill.”

This was a Conservative election pledge to try to open up the legislative process and improve the scrutiny of proposed legislation, while still retaining the fundamental character of our representative democracy.

The next government looks set to vastly expand the range of data available on sites such as data.gov.uk, while also expanding the scope of the Freedom of Information Act (another pledge outlined in the coalition agreement). The plans outlined today regarding government transparency and accountability look all set to meet David Cameron and Nick Clegg’s stated ambition to:

distribute power and opportunity to people rather than hoarding authority within government. That way, we can build the free, fair and responsible society we want to see.

For more on today’s Coalition agreement, and for a video of the event check Number 10 news page.

Earlier today, David Cameron outlined new Conservative plans “for real change in politics”. In a speech entitled “Big ideas to give Britain Real Change”, he described 9 ideas for real change in Politics. Ideas include:

1. No more unelected Prime Ministers
2. Opening up democracy: More postal primaries
3. Expanding the Freedom of Information Act
4. Neighbourhood budgets: giving neighbourhoods direct funding
5. Public drafting: “Crowdsourcing” the drafting of government legislation
6. Opening up parliament: a Public Reading Day
7. Protecting whistleblowers: Strengthening protection on government waste and misuses of public money
8. A new right to data: Right to Data Act
9. Strengthening Select Committees

Of particular interest to those in favour of a more Open Government are the plans for:

Expanding the Freedom of Information Act

The Conservatives plan to expand the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to include taxpayer-funded bodies such as Northern Rock and Network Rail, along with bodies such as the Local Government Association. The idea is to provide the public with access to a wide range of government information previously not freely available.

Public drafting: “Crowdsourcing” the drafting of government legislation

Late last year, the Conservatives announced a competition to create an online platform to through which citizens can post ideas in relation to government policy. The intention was to create a platform through which ‘the collective wisdom of the British people’ could be harnessed to improve draft legislation.

The Conservatives claim “Government legislation is often hastily drafted, leading to unintended consequences in the law.” As such, they plan to

pilot a new ‘crowd-sourcing’ approach to drafting legislation, enabling expert members of the public to play a role. This will help produce better Bills.

This new system of ‘Public Drafting’, will allow members of the public the opportunity to engage with and improve the drafting of legislation. It will have four stages:

• The Department sponsoring the legislation will publish detailed instructions on the policy intentions of the legislation online, as well an explanation of the constraints within which all clauses will have to be drafted.

• People will register for an online forum that allows them to submit draft clauses they believe will achieve the specified policy aims. We expect this to include lawyers, academics and other experts. If needed, contributors will also be able to ask the sponsoring Department questions to clarify the drafting instructions, and these questions and answers will be posted online.

• All public contributions will be open to review, comment and amendment from other registered participants, and participants will be encouraged to rate all submissions.

• At the end of the process, the highest rated drafts will go forward to be considered by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, the official government drafters of all legislation. The decision on whether to accept, in whole or in part, any of the top rated drafting suggestions will rest entirely with the Parliamentary Counsel.

They reference Beth Noveck’s book on Wiki Government and the Peer to Patent pilot project as a model on which ‘Public Drafting’ would be based.

Opening up parliament: a Public Reading Day

As part of their aim to “throw open the doors of Parliament” the Conservatives have announced a “Public Reading Stage for legislation” which would take place before a bill goes to Committee stage for deliberation. The idea is to give the public a chance to feed in their comments on proposed legislation which would then be considered by elected officials:

The Public Bill Committee process will include a formal Public Reading Day, when MPs and Lords formally consider and discuss the points submitted by the public. This process will help open up the legislative process and improve the scrutiny of proposed legislation, while still retaining the fundamental character of our representative democracy.

A new right to data: Right to Data Act

The Conservatives propose a “Right to Data Act”  to give members of the public a legally enforceable ‘Right to Data’. This will allow for members to the public to appeal if public bodies refuse requests for data collected by government. They claim this:

radical policy will help transform the culture of the public sector from one that presumes secrecy to one that presumes datasets should be open and shared with the public on an ongoing basis.

The Conservatives look set to expand the reach of data.gov.uk through making more datasets available particularly in relation to government spending. As part of this, they reference the President Obama and how he has promoted transparency in government spending through the establishment of Recovery.gov and the bill enacting USAspending.gov.

People power through electoral reform

Overall it looks like an interesting set of ideas that expand on David Cameron’s ideas on People Power and the Conservative manifesto’s ‘Invitation to join the government’. However, while this agenda establishes a progressive stance towards open government, it does not mention topics such as electoral reform which would enshrine a more fundamental change into British politics. It’s not to say the Conservatives don’t have ideas on this – their manifesto contains pledges on petitions to secure debates in Parliament and reform of the House of Lords – it’s just that fundamental people power i.e. through the power of the vote, is not adequately addressed.

According to yesterday’s BBC poll of polls: Liberal Democrats with 30% of the vote will get 102 seats, Conservatives with 33% get 258 seats, while Labour coming in third with 27% will emerge as the victor with 261 seats. Will Hutton, of the Work Foundation, summed up the situation:

We want our votes and opinions to count. Yet the majority of us vote in constituencies which are essentially rotten boroughs that will return the same party come what may. Your choice, if not from a winning party, is not to vote or vote tactically. Only in the 100 or so marginals, where Lord Ashcroft has directed his millions, is there a genuine political contest. It is the fast road to voter disengagement.

Analogous to this Polly Toynbee of the Guardian explained ‘we need to change the system to make every single vote count’.

The Liberal Democrats support a change to the voting system through the introduction of proportional representation. They believe this is a much fairer and more equitable system. This is supported by advocacy groups such as Vote for a Change. However, as it’s unlikely the Liberal Democrats will be the largest party at the next election, they are calling for a Hung Parliament as a means of achieving this electoral reform.

The new economics foundation’s Vote Power Index, demonstrates the unequal distribution of electoral power under the current UK voting system. The index calculates the value of a vote in a constituency based on the number of votes and the chances of the seat changing hands.

Stephen Whitehead explained the two startling findings of the index:

Firstly, it shows the staggering inefficiency of our system in translating votes into outcomes. Thanks to the vast number of votes that are effectively wasted, almost three quarters of voting power is squandered.

Secondly, and perhaps more fundamentally, the index highlights the chronic injustice of our system. In the UK the luckiest fifth of voters have more than 33 times more power than the unluckiest fifth. This is a far more uneven distribution than household income in the UK.

This index highlights the need to change Britain’s electoral system to establish a voting regime that recognises the importance and significant of each vote, and ensures the majority opinion of people throughout the country is reflected in the Houses of Parliament.

Now that really would be a big idea.

Further reading

• Vote for a Change
• Electoral Reform Society
• Electoral dysfunction: Why democracy is always unfair

Gordon Brown’s speech last week on “Building Britain’s Digital Future”, covered a wide range of topics, but focused particularly how digital technologies such as the “semantic web” could drive a radical reshaping of government and its interactions with citizens.

He outlined his ambition for Britain to be the world leader not only in the digital economy, but also:

in public service delivery where we can give the greatest possible voice and choice to citizens, parents patients and consumers; and the world leader in the new politics where that voice for feedback and deliberative decisions can transform the way we make local and national policies and decisions.

Linked data

Mr. Brown explained how the concept of Linked data and the semantic web has ‘the potential to be just as revolutionary as the web’.  He went on to say:

in both the content and delivery of public services the next stage of the web will transform the ability of citizens to tailor the services they need to their requirements, to feedback constantly on their success, to interact with the professionals who deliver them and to put the citizen not the public servant in control.

As part of this, he announced £30m in funding to support the creation of a new institute, the institute of web science – headed by  Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the world wide web) and Professor Nigel Shadbolt (expert in web science) – to realise the social and economic benefits of advances in the web. The idea is to ensure the UK is at the cutting edge of research on the semantic web and other internet technologies.

Digital revolution

Brown outlined three steps to ensure the UK realizes the ambition to become a leader in the next stage of the digital revolution: digitise and improve the digital communications infrastructure; personalise service delivery and government interactions; and harness the power of technology to economise .

• Digitise – Make the UK a leader in the provision of “superfast broadband”.

The prime minister said access to broadband was a fundamental freedom in the modern world, and would save government billions of pounds while at the same time revolutionizing how people access public services.

Superfast broadband is the electricity of the digital age. And I believe it must be for all – not just for some.

[...] Faster broadband speeds will bring new, cheaper, more personalised and more effective public services to people; it will bring games and entertainment options with new levels of sophistication; it will make accessing goods and services immeasurably easier; it will enrich our democracy by giving people new ways of communicating complaining and challenging vested interests.

• Personalise – Seize the opportunities for voice and choice in our public services by opening up data and digital technology to transform the way citizens interact with government.

He announced that from 1st April, ordnance survey information will be made freely available to the public and in the autumn the government will publish online an inventory of all non-personal datasets held by departments and arms-length bodies – a “domesday book” for the 21st century.

[..] we must use this technology to open up data with the aim of providing every citizen in Britain with true ownership and accountability over the services they demand from government.

And in doing so we can put in place the best most personalised but universally accessible digital public services in the world, and harness the power of technology to economise – shaking up Whitehall and making us the most efficient, open and responsive government in the world.

[...] The new domesday book will for the first time allow the public to access in one place information on each set of data including its size, source, format, content, timeliness, cost and quality. And there will be an expectation that departments will release each of these datasets, or account publicly for why they are not doing so.

Any business or individual will be free to embed this public data in their own websites, and to use it in creative ways within their own applications.

Along with opening up data Brown also set out a raft of measures to create personalised web pages for everyone to engage with government services. It’s called Mygov and is seen as a replacement to the first generation of online citizen interaction with government i.e. e-government:

Mygov will constitute a radical new model for how public services will be delivered and for how citizens engage with government – making interaction with government as easy as internet banking or online shopping. This open, personalised platform will allow us to deliver universal services that are also tailored to the needs of each individual; to move from top-down, monolithic websites broadcasting public service information in the hope that the people who need help will find it – to government on demand.

[...] Online, Mygov will give people a simple “dashboard” to manage their pensions, tax credits or child benefits; pay their council tax; fix their doctors or hospital appointment and control their own treatment; apply for the schools of their choice and communicate with their children’s teachers; or get a new passport or driving licence – all available when and where they need it.

[...] This bold new approach will transform the way services are delivered but, more importantly, it will be the vehicle through which citizens will come to control the services that are so important to their lives and communities. With Mygov, citizens will be in control – choosing the content relevant to them and determining their level of engagement.

• Economise – The Pre-Budget Report we set out the government’s determination to find £11 billion of savings by driving up operational efficiency, much of it enabled by the increased transparency and reduced costs made available by new technology.

The prime minister explained how restructuring and reform government departments should provide for major savings on running costs – while providing better services to the citizen. This transformation will be driven through the use of new digital technologies which can enable the change from a “paternalistic, closed Whitehall to an open, interactive responsive enabler where citizens personalise shape and ultimately control their services.”

He explained how the government is  committed to achieving £4bn of savings from back office functions by 2012-13. To drive this forward, the government intends to establish a number of business service companies that will handle the routine back office functions of Whitehall departments. The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) as held up as an example of how this could work:

The prototype for this new approach already exists – the shared services centre in the department for work and pensions, which already supports 140,000 staff in three departments and plans to take on four more in the next year. DWP also has plans to establish its shared services as a trading fund within the next twelve months, and will explore in parallel the scope for bringing further commercial expertise into its work.

Deliberative democracy

While the majority of Brown’s speech focused on harnessing new technology to refashion the structures and workings of government, he also envisaged how it could “open the door to a reinvention of the core policy-making processes and towards a renewal of politics itself.”

Digital government can open new ways of enabling people to influence and even decide public policy (check San Francisco’s recent example of such Policy consultations).

[...] Since it was established at the end of 2006, the number 10 e-petitions service has received more than 70 thousand petitions. There have been more than 12 million signatures placed and the Government has replied with more than 8 million e-mail responses.

Each week I record a podcast and use twitter most days. Number10.gov.uk carries out daily conversations with more than 1.7 million followers. There have been almost 2 million views of our images on flickr and 4.3 million views of our films and videos on YouTube.

Perhaps, as a reference to the US government’s recent citizen engagement initiative – as part of the Open Government Directive - he explained how he was inviting people to directly share in the task of government that is there to serve them.

And I am today tasking every department to identify the far wider scope for deliberative engagements with the public, specifiying the outcome expected from such engagement.

It’ll be interesting to see how departments gather together the scope for such an exercise, and whether they go to the same lengths as US government agencies in crowdsourcing ideas.

Future

Gordon Brown has signaled his determination to harness new digital technology to reshape government and create a new generation platform upon which citizens can engage more efficiently. However, with an election expected to be announced next week, it’s unsure whether he will still be in office to see these ideas implemented.

Nevertheless, many aspects of the speech above are also contained in the Conservative’s recent Technology manifesto e.g. the release of more government data, improving broadband speeds and utilising more ‘Open Source’ software to reduce IT costs. Whoever wins the next election it looks like the central tenets of Open Government – transparency, participation, and collaboration – will become more and more integral to the delivery of public services and the efficacy of government departments.

Related

• Building Britain’s Digital Future’ speech with twitter subtitles (H/T @mhawksey)
• Tim Berners-Lee, Nigel Shadbolt and Martha Lane Fox on Twitter