3.1 The Government's reform programme promotes greater choice and accountability. Transparency is central to these reforms and the Government has said that it "will ensure that key data about public services, user satisfaction and the performance of all providers from all sectors is in the public domain in an accessible form. This will include data on user satisfaction, spending, performance and equality."15
3.2 To support individuals in choosing appropriate providers and holding public bodies and providers to account, we consider that the following types of information are needed:
• Descriptive information about providers, for example location and provider type.
• Objective, standardised activity and performance information that sets out the levels of services provided and their quality.
• Information about performance based on people's experiences, for example user satisfaction information.
• Information on spending, enabling analysis of links between spending and performance.
• Contextual information about data, including quality disclosure, to assist interpretation.
3.3 The current state of information release, according to these criteria, is patchy. There is variation in how far current data helps people to make informed choices, and helps communities and neighbourhoods to understand the performance of public services in their area. The following examples illustrate this variation.