SOCITM (Society of Information Technology Management)
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Why transparency could change the shape of local public services: new briefing from Socitm Insight

The Coalition Government's transparency agenda, which by early February had seen all but eight English councils post spending above £500 online, could well change the shape of local public services, with communities able to monitor, comment upon, challenge, and ultimately even take over local authority services in their area.

This is the conclusion of Transparency: seeing it through, the latest monthly briefing from Socitm Insight, the research arm of the local public services IT and information professionals' association.

 

The briefing sets out the approach to transparency taken by the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead, which put information about its work online ahead of government requirements, and published not just financial transactions, but also contracts, sources of income, and real-time energy consumption in principal buildings.

 

The consequence, says the Borough's Chief Executive, has been a cultural change within the organization: people are much more careful now about how they spend money. When the council's energy consumption data was put online in real time, this exposure increased internal attention to the figures and consequent management action has led to significant savings.

 

This example highlights a more general point says the briefing - that transparency means employees start to think about information in the public domain from a new perspective. They become concerned about what the public will think, rather than just considering the information from an organisational viewpoint.

 

Longer-term, employees may begin to accept transparency as a fact of life. This is particularly likely if the organisation chooses to publish all unclassified information. The presumption then becomes that everything is on view, and, like having CCTV cameras in the street, the result is changed behaviours.

 

The briefing also discusses whether there is a need to publish information rather than just raw data. Without context for the data, people may jump to the wrong conclusions, leading to follow up questions and Freedom of Information requests, while 'armchair auditors will not be able to make true 'like-for-like' comparisons or draw any valid conclusions.  

 

The additional cost of providing information rather than raw data will have benefits for democratic engagement, as elected members will be better informed, and therefore more capable of carrying out their democratic duties, while the electorate will be more aware of the policy framework that shapes their locality, and more inclined to participate in policy design and decision-making.

 

An even further-reaching implication of the transparency agenda, says the briefing, is the support it will give to the Coalition Government's 'Community Right to Challenge' - a commitment to give communities the right to bid to take over local state-run services, which is the subject of a current consultation.

 

This links to other coalition policies - the 'Right to Provide' which would give public sector workers a right to form employee-owned co-operatives and bid to take over the services they currently deliver; powers for communities to save local facilities threatened with closure (the Community Right to Buy); provision for homes for local people (Community Right to Build); and the creation and expansion of mutuals, co-operatives, charities and social enterprises, enabling these groups to have much greater involvement in the running of public services.

 

Organisations looking to take advantage of these developments will need substantial amounts of information on which to build their business case and service design, and transparency will make it easier for them to obtain it.

 

In terms of the cost of transparency to public service organisations, the briefing points out that this will not be so great for those with good information systems and well-organised information assets. Clean, well-structured data in open databases accessible with modern information mining tools is the best starting point.

 

However, according to briefing author and Socitm Insight Associate Chris Head 'Many authorities are using financial and other systems that make it hard to extract information. With makeshift integration between them and other applications, transparency may be costly to achieve in the short term, even if the longer-term efficiency benefits of addressing these issues - leaving aside the wider benefits of transparency covered in the briefing - may be considerable'.

 

Transparency: seeing it through, published at the end of February, is available free of charge to Socitm Insight subscribers, and can be downloaded from www.socitm.net.

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