Following our move into the Government Digital Service we have moved to a new site to better link our work with the rest of the group. Please update your RSS and follow us at http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/

This site will be archived by The National Archives as soon . . . → Read More: This blog has moved!]]> Hello,

Following our move into the Government Digital Service we have moved to a new site to better link our work with the rest of the group. Please update your RSS and follow us at http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/

This site will be archived by The National Archives as soon as possible.

In the past few months this blog has made a few introductions and this will be the last for a while! We are very pleased to announce that Mike Bracken has been appointed as the Government’s new Executive Director for Digital from the 5th of July. The role . . . → Read More: Mike Bracken appointed as HMG Executive Director for Digital]]>

Mike Bracken. Picture courtesy of Thayer Prime

In the past few months this blog has made a few introductions and this will be the last for a while! We are very pleased to announce that Mike Bracken has been appointed as the Government’s new Executive Director for Digital from the 5th of July. The role will combine the work of the Chief Executive of Directgov, the lead of cross-Government digital reform work and part of the work of the Director for Digital Engagement and Transparency. He will report to Ian Watmore, the Government’s Chief Operating Officer, be based in the Cabinet Office and will be responsible for over 100 staff in the Government Digital Service, of which Digital Engagement is part.

Mike’s current role at Guardian News and Media is as the Director of Digital Development where he is ‘responsible for the customer facing technology services and applications’. Chris Chant, interim Director for Digital, will continue supporting Mike to lead the transition to the Government Digital Service (GDS) and the recommendations set out in Martha Lane Fox’s report.

We now look forward to Mike’s ideas and vision for government online including digital engagement, and blogging about it here. Mike has already come across the Digital Engagement team when helping to run one of the first official Government data hack days after the alpha launch of data.gov.uk and later hosting the site’s full launch at the Guardian in January 2010.

Mike has written about his appointment on his site and you can find further reaction on Simon Dickson’s and Steph Gray’s blogs.

In January we announced the appointment of Chris Chant as Interim Executive Director for Digital Government. This appointment followed the publication of Martha Lane Fox’s report to Government, “Directgov 2010 and Beyond“, which made various recommendations to drive up the quality of the Government’s online presence and services.

A specific recommendation of the report was . . . → Read More: Towards a Single Government Domain]]>

Tom Loosemore

In January we announced the appointment of Chris Chant as Interim Executive Director for Digital Government. This appointment followed the publication of Martha Lane Fox’s report to Government, “Directgov 2010 and Beyond“, which made various recommendations to drive up the quality of the Government’s online presence and services.

A specific recommendation of the report was for a Single Government domain so Chris Chant has commissioned a project to test its feasibility. Chris has asked Tom Loosemore, formerly of the BBC’s web operation, to pull together the project. He will be working alongside Jimmy Leach, currently head of digital at the FCO, who will act as the editorial lead. Tom is quickly creating a small team of skilled people from inside and outside government to create a prototype, a proof of concept, to see how a single domain might look and operate. This would take the website rationalization which had already begun to its logical conclusion.

Their brief is twofold: to show how it is possible to deliver, quickly, a working model of a new and fundamentally user-focused approach to government digital and to do so using an agile, multi-disciplinary approach, radically altering the nature of the citizen’s user experience and the work processes needed behind the scenes.  So far, based on an exhaustive analysis of user behaviour data, a list of the most prevalent user needs from Government websites has been developed from search term data. Tom has challenged his team to develop an ‘alpha’ version of the domain to meet these user needs better (whether via a piece of content, a decision tree or a transaction) than the current Government web estate does.

It’s an exciting project and Tom and the team will be making public their progress as they go. We will report when the first iterations are public. Chris has made clear his commitment to engaging with the public to get feedback on the site as it develops as this will be essential to its success.

The Coalition Agreement stated that the Government . . . → Read More: Right to Data and the Protection of Freedoms Bill]]> Greater transparency is at the heart of our commitment to open up Government to greater scrutiny and allow the public to hold us to account. Improving access to public sector data will help citizens to make choices about their services and better enable them to converse and collaborate with Government.

The Coalition Agreement stated that the Government 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”. It went on that this was “..to 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.”

The Freedom of Information Act currently provides for access to information held by public authorities. However it makes no express provision for datasets, their availability for re-use or their publication in a re-useable format.  For the first time, though, proposed Clause 92 of the Protection of Freedoms Bill currently in it’s First Reading provides for public authorities to publish datasets available for re-use in a re-useable format, whether in response to requests or through their publication schemes.

Screenshot of http://fixmystreet.com

Greater availability of re-usable datasets will generate new economic and social value. In turn this could ease the development of new electronic services for the public such as FixMyStreet , which lets you highlight to your council a problem in your street which needs to be fixed or resolved; OpenlyLocal, an open and unified way of assessing local government information; and the My Train-Stop app – which allows you to set an alarm for your destination station that will be triggered as you approach it using the GPS features available on some mobile phones.

Screenshot of http://openlylocal.com

]]> http://digitalengagement.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/blog/2011/02/15/right-to-data-and-the-protection-of-freedoms-bill/feed/ 1 http://digitalengagement.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/blog/2011/02/04/introducing-chris-chant/ http://digitalengagement.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/blog/2011/02/04/introducing-chris-chant/#comments Fri, 04 Feb 2011 15:11:09 +0000 JamesT http://digitalengagement.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/blog/?p=49 Chris Chant at UKGovcamp. Image courtesy of Paul Clarke

Following the recent retirement of Andrew Stott as Director for Digital Engagement we have received several queries about the future of the Digital Engagement agenda. So we are very pleased to introduce Chris Chant, who has been appointed Director for DirectGov and Digital Engagement and will be . . . → Read More: Introducing Chris Chant]]>

Chris Chant at UKGovcamp. Image courtesy of Paul Clarke

Following the recent retirement of Andrew Stott as Director for Digital Engagement we have received several queries about the future of the Digital Engagement agenda. So we are very pleased to introduce Chris Chant, who has been appointed Director for DirectGov and Digital Engagement and will be based in the Cabinet Office.

Chris attended the UKGovcamp unconference on the 22^nd January and gave an early insight into his priorities for the next few months. This was a chance for Chris to introduce himself to a community with long experience and great enthusiasm for the digital agenda in Government. In a brief keynote session he covered various aspects of his role including Martha Lane Fox’s report Directgov 2010 and Beyond: Revolution Not Evolution ,  his role in finding efficiency savings in the public sector’s use of technology and the future for digital engagement in Government.

Chris explained that work to create an overarching digital strategy was happening to meet the need to reform Government IT & Digital in the context of the ongoing wider reforms across the public sector. The challenges and opportunities that  Government reforms pose means that this is a very exciting time to be taking on this role.  There is greater scope to find radical solutions to old problems, for example, to better embed open source across Government but these decisions will be a question of finding the right balance and making sure that any changes are  taken forward for the right reasons.

Chris’s full speech can be seen (courtesy of Steph Gray) here

Chris has a long track record of success in delivering complex business and technology change in the public sector. Most of his work has involved working in successful partnership with multiple public sector bodies and the largest IT suppliers in the industry, where he has championed innovative approaches which challenge attitudes on both sides of the partnership. His recent work has included stints as the Programme Director in the Cabinet Office leading the UK Government’s move to cloud computing and data centre consolidation across the public sector. Previously, Chris was Director of London 2012 Integration and Assurance and also Chief Information Officer within the Government Olympic Executive, and also held specific responsibility for ensuring integrated delivery of the security systems required. Before that, Chris was CIO for Defra, where he led a major IT service improvement programme with a strategic outsourcing partner. After his early career in the (then) Inland Revenue and later, HMRC, he worked at the cabinet Office where he was programme director for a range of large and complex multi-agency IT services, including the Government Gateway.

The UKGovcamp buzz aggregator carries further coverage and reaction to the day’s events.

The Review will enable Government to ensure that on-going releases of data are done in a way that provides maximum transparency of . . . → Read More: Transparency and Privacy Review to be led by Dr. Kieron O’Hara]]> The Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, has announced a review of the impact of Transparency on Privacy to inform the Government’s approach to the release of data as part of the Transparency agenda.

The Review will enable Government to ensure that on-going releases of data are done in a way that provides maximum transparency of data consistent with the appropriate level of privacy protection.

Specifically the Review will:

• Support the Government in striking the right balance between transparency and data protection safeguards, and between the interests of wider society and the interests of the individual or corporate body.
• Identify the nature of the risk to privacy of the individual posed by transparency of public data, in particular the potential for ‘jigsaw’ identification.
• Advise the Government on practical approaches to take

To achieve this remit, the Minister for the Cabinet Office has asked Dr Kieron O’Hara to lead to the Review.

Dr Kieron O'Hara

Dr Kieron O’Hara is a Senior Research Fellow in Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton and a research fellow of the Web Science Trust. His interests are in the philosophy, sociology and politics of technology, particularly the World Wide Web and the Semantic Web, and the use of technology to support human memory; key themes are trust and privacy. He has had a central involvement in the development of the discipline of web science.

He is the author of several books, including: ‘Plato and the Internet’ (2002); ‘Trust: From Socrates to Spin’ (2004); ‘inequality.com: Power, Poverty and the Digital Divide’ (2006, with David Stevens); and ‘The Spy in the Coffee Machine: The End of Privacy As We Know It’ (2008, with Nigel Shadbolt), as well as ‘A Framework for Web Science’ (2006, with Tim Berners-Lee et al), for the journal ‘Foundations and Trends in Web Science’. He has also written extensively on British politics and political theory, and is a research fellow for the Centre for Policy Studies. He writes frequently for popular journals and newspapers, has appeared several times on radio and television, and regularly blogs for the British Computer Society and the Centre for Policy Studies.

The Review will be supported by a team based in the Transparency and Digital Engagement unit. Findings from the Review will be published in March 2011 with  a report on interim conclusions due in January.

As the Review progresses we will try to share further details on this blog. Here are the Transparency and Privacy Review Terms of Reference

Today in London, Europe’s first ever international data camp began with the UK’s Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, announcing that we are opening up data on central government spending. As part of its ongoing drive to make government more accountable and more transparent than . . . → Read More: Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, addresses Europe’s first international open government data camp]]>

Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, speaking at #openuk

Today in London, Europe’s first ever international data camp began with the UK’s Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, announcing that we are opening up data on central government spending. As part of its ongoing drive to make government more accountable and more transparent than ever before, all central government bodies are publishing details of their spending over £25,000 for the last six months.

The publication of this spending data is a huge stride forward for government openness.  This new information provides an unparalleled insight into where government spends money and gives people the information they need to be able to hold Government to account. This Government believes that greater transparency is essential to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account, to deliver better value for money in public spending and to realise significant economic benefits through enabling businesses and non-profit organisations to build innovative applications and websites using public data.

Today’s release builds on the progress we have made in publishing a huge amount of government data over the past 6 months, including:

• COINS spending data (HM Treasury’s ‘Combined Online Information System’–a database  also used to track central Government’s spending);

• salaries of the most senior civil servants ;

• departmental organisation charts

As the Minister emphasised, this is just the start. From now on, all of this information will be published on a regular basis by departments. Through the draft information strategies published in our Business Plans, departments have also set out what further information they will make available to the public, and by when. There are more radical reforms to come, including:

• the publication of local government data in January 2011 along the same lines as today’s information;

• the launch of ‘street-level’ crime data, to provide the public with detailed information about crime in their neighbourhoods in January 2011;

• the introduction of a Right to Data, giving the public access to datasets they request by March 2011.

The programme of government data release is very much a work in progress with the result that some data isn’t fully comprehensive across Government nor as detailed as we would wish. In future, we want to do this for all departments, but before we can make this happen we need to review and think about how to reform the various processes and systems within organisations to produce more consistent data.

We are starting that process now, and will work as quickly as possible in the coming months to ensure that we clearly and publicly account for where departments spend your money by publishing as much information about spending decisions as we feasibly can.

Tell us what you think.

With Andrew Stott retiring the team is now . . . → Read More: Welcome to the new Transparency and Digital Engagement blog]]> Welcome to the new blog platform for the reconstituted and repurposed Transparency and Digital Engagement team. As with the old Digital Engagement blog the team will be using this to talk about what we are up to, the technical challenges we are facing and to test out early solutions.

With Andrew Stott retiring the team is now led by Katie Davis – as the new interim Director of Transparency and Digital Engagement. Katie joined the Efficiency and Reform Group in the Cabinet Office in August 2010 to help to shape Government’s approach to improving efficiency across Whitehall.  Katie’s experience in developing cross-Whitehall strategies and getting things done across departments will help Government to drive forward the Transparency, Digital Engagement and Open Data agendas at pace.

From 2007 to 2010, Katie was the Executive Director of Strategy for the Identity and Passport Service, an executive agency of the Home Office. In this role, she had responsibility for developing IPS’ corporate strategy as well as leading the development of future strategies for the Home Office and across Whitehall. Prior to this, Katie was the Director of the Government IT Profession in the Cabinet Office where she had responsibility for leading efforts to increase Government’s capacity and capability to use new technology to improve public services.  Katie’s strategy development and delivery skills were developed through over 20 years of experience delivering complex change programmes across the public and private sectors.

In the next few weeks we will try to keep this space up to speed with these rapidly evolving agendas but in the meantime we would very much welcome any feedback you might have on our new platform.