The Transparency Agenda is a coalition pledge championed by the Prime Minister to make the Government more open. Every department of state and each arm's-length body shares responsibility as part of this Government's drive to make public sector organisations more accountable to the British public. Much has been achieved since we have gone about opening up Whitehall and the wider public sector, changing the relationship between the citizen and state by giving people access to data that matters to them. Greater transparency enables accountability, improves choices, increases public service productivity and quality as well as encouraging social and economic growth.
As a result of the work so far the public now has unprecedented access to data in government spend, transport, health, justice, crime and education. Much of this information is available on www.data.gov.uk, one of the largest government data resources in the world. We have also positioned Open Data as an integral part of the UK's economic growth strategy, announcing an ambitious package of measures in the Chancellor's Autumn Statement 2011.
Transparency and Open Data represent new ways of doing government. Therefore, as this agenda develops, we will continue to build the economic benefit case, demonstrating how these core operating principles can lead to new economic growth and greater efficiency within the public sector.
Achieved |
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May 2010 | First Prime Minister letter on transparency which included commitments for departments to publish senior staff salary details and data on central and local government spending. |
June 2010 | Public Sector Transparency Board, chaired by Minister for the Cabinet Office and consisting of public sector data specialists, meets for the first time to drive forward transparency agenda. |
February 2011 | Launch of police.uk by the Home Office which gives the public unprecedented access to crime data across the whole of England and Wales. Over 47 million visits since inception. |
July 2011 | Second Prime Minister letter on transparency which set out commitments to publish data across public services including health, transport and criminal justice. The letter also included measures to improve the quality of government data. Data on apprenticeships paid for by the Government released by Department for Education. |
August 2011 | Launch of 'Making Open Data Real' consultation which set out proposals for the Government's Transparency and Open Data Strategy. |
August-October 2011 | Nearly five hundred responses to the Making Open Data Real consultation received from a variety of sectors such as health, industry, local and central government. |
October 2011 | Reoffending rates data published by Ministry of Justice. Free government data sets from Transport Direct published alongside road works data on strategic road network published by Department for Transport. Hospital complaints data published by NHS Information Centre. |
November 2011 | Launch of Open Data Measures in the Autumn Statement. These included establishing a Data Strategy Board and a Public Data Group that will maximise the value of the data from the Met Office, Ordnance Survey, the Land Registry and Companies House. Sentencing by court data made available by Ministry of Justice. |
December 2011 | 7,865 data sets on www.data.gov.uk. Twenty-three out of twenty-five commitments for central government in the Prime Minister's letters due by December 2011 are met. Inaugural meeting of the Transparency Senior Officials group which coordinates progress of transparency agenda across individual government departments. Publication of prescribing data by GP practices by NHS Information Centre. Publication of clinical outcomes data by NHS Information Centre. Real-time data on strategic road network (speed congestion) and weekly rail timetable data released by Department for Transport. |
Achieved continued |
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January 2012 | Publication of summary of responses to 'Making Open Data Real' consultation alongside substantive consultation responses. Department for Education brings together school spending data, school performance data, pupil cohort data and Ofsted judgements, in a parent-friendly portal, searchable by postcode. |
March 2012 | Cabinet Office and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills publishes the terms of reference for Data Strategy Board. Department for Transport releases a range of highways and traffic data via the 'Roadworks' website, which includes data to help reduce congestion and enable business to make more predictable travel and logistics decisions. Publication of Open for Business which set out how open data is already fuelling UK businesses, creating jobs and supporting economic growth. This was accompanied by an interactive site to enable other organisations to tell government how they are using public data to create innovative new business models, products and services. |
Planned |
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April 2012 | Network Rail and the Traveline will work with the transport industry to make available timetable and real-time train and bus information to support the development of innovative applications to improve passenger journeys. Publication of the business plan for the Open Data Institute (ODI). The ODI will innovate, exploit and research the opportunities for the United Kingdom created by the Government's Open Data policy. In addition the ODI will develop the economic benefits case and business model for Open Data. United Kingdom to take over co-chairmanship of the Open Government Partnership from the United States. The Open Government Partnership is a multilateral initiative with more than 50 member countries that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to promote prosperity and reduce inequalities. Department of Health to release data about the quality of postgraduate medical education. Clinical audits and NHS staff satisfaction data released by Department of Health. |
Mid-2012 | Cabinet Office to publish Transparency and Open Data products setting out the Government's vision for embedding Transparency and Open Data as core operating principles of the public services. These products will include a formal response to the Kieron O'Hara report on privacy and transparency. Cabinet Office will continue to build an evidence base to demonstrate how increased transparency can promote economic growth and greater efficiency within the public sector. Individual departmental Open Data Strategies due for publication. www.data.gov.uk will be refreshed alongside ongoing work with government departments to help them improve quality of their metadata (information about the data) and to increase the portfolio of their published datasets. Home Office to release Crime Mapper to Justice Mapper data. |
Planned continued |
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June 2012 | Department for Education to open up access to anonymised data from the National Pupil Database. |
September 2012 | Health and Social Care Information Centre will provide a service link to primary and secondary healthcare datasets to reinforce the UK's position as a global centre for research and analytics and boost UK life sciences. NHS Information Centre will publish further prescribing data. Open Data Institute due to open. |
During and beyond 2012 | Department for Work and Pensions and Cabinet Office via the new Welfare Sector Transparency Board will consider opportunities for securely linking welfare datasets to other government and commercial datasets to increase their value to the industry. Department for Work and Pensions will consult on the content of anonymised fit note data from 2012 to drive innovation in the occupational health sector and improve management of sickness absence. Department for Work and Pensions will design the Universal Credit system so that aggregate benefits data can be published during the first year of the live running of the system. Department for Health will ensure all NHS patients can access their personal GP records online by the end of this Parliament. Department for Transport plans to legislate to give the Civil Aviation Authority the power to publish data on the performance of aviation service providers. The Cabinet Office will set up an Open Data User Group (ODUG) to support the work of the new Data Strategy Board (DSB). The ODUG will advise the DSB on public sector data that should be prioritised for release as open data. Note: planned release dates are correct at the time of going to press. |
Specific responsibilities of departments are set out in a number of documents, including the Prime Minister's letters of May 2010, and July 2011, and in departmental Open Data Strategies which detail current and planned data releases that departments themselves are responsible for delivering. Open Data Strategies are due for publication for the first time later in the year and will be included in departments' business plans and refreshed yearly thereafter.
The Cabinet Office also has a small strategic team that aims to provide strategic leadership on this agenda, and specifically is responsible for:
• Bringing together officials from across government to help promote and deliver transparency agenda.
• Advising the Government on the progress of the transparency agenda.
• Providing a secretariat to the Transparency Board.
• Providing guidance and approving departmental 'Open Data Strategies'.
• Managing and developing the www.data.gov.uk website.
• Working with other departments such as the Ministry of Justice to look at the legislative landscape around transparency agenda.
• Setting up the Open Data User Group to provide advice on release of Open Data to the Data Strategy Board.
• Setting up the Open Data Institute.
• Developing policy in areas specified in the timeline.
Cabinet Office
April 2012