implementing transparency report from the nao
TRANSCRIPT
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Cross-government review
Implementing transparency
REPORT BY THECOMPTROLLER ANDAUDITOR GENERAL
HC 1833
SESSION 20102012
18 APRIL 2012
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The National Audit Ofce scrutinises public spending on behal
o Parliament. The Comptroller and Auditor General, Amyas Morse,
is an Ofcer o the House o Commons. He is the head o the NAO,
which employs some 880 sta. He and the NAO are totally independent
o government. He certifes the accounts o all government departments
and a wide range o other public sector bodies; and he has statutory
authority to report to Parliament on the economy, efciency and
eectiveness with which departments and other bodies have used their
resources. Our work led to savings and other efciency gains worth
more than 1 billion in 2010-11.
Our vision is to help the nation spend wisely.
We apply the unique perspective o public audit
to help Parliament and government drive lasting
improvement in public services.
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Ordered by the House o Commons
to be printed on 16 April 2012
Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General
HC 1833 Session 20102012
18 April 2012
London: The Stationery Oce
16.00
This report has been
prepared under Section 6
o the National Audit Act
1983 or presentation to
the House o Commons
in accordance with
Section 9 o the Act.
Amyas Morse
Comptroller and
Auditor General
National Audit Oce
13 April 2012
Cross-government review
Implementing transparency
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Successive governments have promoted
transparency by developing legislation and
routinely releasing more inormation to the
public. The transparency agenda is a pledge by
the Coalition Government to make governmentmore open.
National Audit Ofce 2012
The text o this document may be reproduced ree o charge in
any ormat or medium providing that it is reproduced accurately
and not in a misleading context.
The material must be acknowledged as National Audit Ofce
copyright and the document title specifed. Where third party
material has been identifed, permission rom the respective
copyright holder must be sought.
Printed in the UK or the Stationery Ofce Limited
on behal o the Controller o Her Majestys Stationery Ofce
2487106 04/12 PRCP
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Contents
Key acts 4
Summary 5
Part One
Introduction 12
Part Two
Progress o implementing
transparency 15
Part Three
Aligning transparency with
choice and accountability 22
Part Four
Aligning transparency with
economic growth 29
Appendix One
Methodology 33
Appendix Two
Timeline o transparency
achievements and uture
aspirations 34
Endnotes 39
The National Audit Oce study team
consisted o:
Anthony Byrtus, Milly Cottam,
Rory Crew, Daniel Lambauer,
Mohit Parmar, Andrew Sharman
and Nigel Terrington, under the
direction o Nick Sloan.
This report can be ound on the
National Audit Oce website at
www.nao.org.uk/transparency-2012phs
courtesy o
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
For urther inormation about the
National Audit Oce please contact:
National Audit Oce
Press Oce
157197 Buckingham Palace Road
Victoria
London
SW1W 9SP
Tel: 020 7798 7400
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.nao.org.uk
Twitter: @NAOorguk
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4 Key acts Implementing transparency
Key acts
23 out o 25 commitments or central government, due by December 2011, were
met by that month
53,000 to
500,000
is the range o estimated sta costs per department in providing the
standard transparency releases required o all departments
84 per cent is the increase in web views to school perormance inormationcompared with the same period in the previous year, since the
Department or Education published its school compare web tool
82 per cent o www.data.gov.uk users leave the website directly rom the
homepage or data page
78 per cent o data elds or departmental spending data ully comply with
HM Treasury guidance
75 per cent o data resources on www.data.gov.uk are machine-readable and
non-proprietary, attributes sucient or the majority o tasks needed
to develop applications
16bnis the Governments
estimate o the value
o public sector
inormation to the UK
economy in 2011
7,865data sets were linked
to the www.data.gov.uk
website in December 2011
47mestimated number o
visits made to the police
crime map website
between February and
December 2011
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Implementing transparency Summary 5
Summary
Introduction and purpose o report
1 Successive governments have promoted transparency by developing legislation
and routinely releasing more inormation to the public. The transparency agenda is
a pledge by the Coalition Government to make government more open. The policy
commitment has been taken orward through three major announcements. The rst
two were communicated through prime ministerial letters to government departments
in May 2010 and Secretaries o State in July 2011. Additional commitments were
announced as part o the ChancellorsAutumn Statement 2011, in November 2011.
Initial data releases related primarily to accountability or use o resources, with later
announcements designed to support service improvement and economic growth.
The Governments objectives or transparency are to:
strengthen public accountability;
support public service improvement by generating more comparative data andincreasing user choice; and
stimulate wider economic growth by helping third parties to develop products and
services based on public sector inormation.
2 Good quality inormation is crucial to eective management. Public disclosure o
that inormation has the potential to improve accountability and support public service
improvement and economic growth. Gaining value rom inormation, however, requires
its scope, quality and presentation to be matched to the purposes and circumstances
o its use. This report reviews early implementation o the transparency initiatives set out
in the prime ministerial letters, and considers arrangements in place to judge value or
money, to establish key lessons that the Government should address:
Part One introduces the background and sets out how transparency is governed.
Part Two considers the progress o implementation to date.
Part Three reviews how transparency aligns with choice and accountability.
Part Four considers the economic growth potential o transparency.
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6 Summary Implementing transparency
Key fndings
Governance
3 The Cabinet Ofce plays the lead role in promoting transparency across
government. It is responsible or coordinating and monitoring implementation,
secretariat support to a Public Sector Transparency Board, bringing together ocials
to embed transparency across government, and providing guidance on some o the
releases required o all government departments. Many other bodies also play signicant
roles in implementing transparency, including other departments who are responsible or
their own data releases, The National Archives, the Inormation Commissioners Oce
and bodies in the wider public sector.
4 Governance arrangements have secured coordinated action, but have
not yet ocused on achieving value or money. The transparency agenda under
this Government began as a coalition pledge with associated actions required o all
departments to implement the policy: the Cabinet Oce did not prepare an overall
policy impact assessment at the outset. As the scope o the transparency agenda has
developed, the Cabinet Oce has published examples o the benets o public data
initiatives to support the strategic case or transparency, or example on its Open or
Business website, but has not yet systematically assessed the costs and benets o
the Governments specic transparency initiatives. The Government announced in
theAutumn Statement 2011 the creation o an Open Data Institute. Early plans or the
Institute include a role to develop a uller evidence base on the economic and public
service benets o open data.
Progress o implementation
5 The Cabinet Ofce, in partnership with departments, has signifcantly
increased the amount and type o public sector inormation released and met
a high proportion o its commitments. Twenty-three out o twenty-ve commitments
or central government in the Prime Ministers letters due by December 2011 had
been met. The www.data.gov.uk website, launched by the previous Government in
January 2010, indexes public data releases. The number o data sets catalogued within
www.data.gov.uk has grown rom 2,500 in January 2010 to 7,865 in December 2011.
6 To date, compliance with transparency good practices has been mixed.
The advisory Transparency Board developed a drat set o public data principles, which
outline good practice or releasing and presenting inormation. Compliance with some
principles is strong. Most o the data releases on www.data.gov.uk are openly available
or re-use, with 86 per cent published under the Open Government Licence and
three-quarters in ormats whereby data can easily be reprocessed. However, in other
areas there has been less progress. For example, the Cabinet Oce has not yet dened
how departments should prepare and disclose data inventories to acilitate wider use.
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Implementing transparency Summary 7
7 The transparency agenda itsel does not defne requirements concerningdata quality disclosure. The Cabinet Ofce has deerred the commitment or
departments to produce data quality action plans rom November 2011 to
May 2012, to incorporate them in the next versions o departmental Business
Plans. Data released under the transparency agenda ranges rom audited gures and
National Statistics data, subject to data protocols and reviews, through to administrative
sources o varying status. In some cases, there are judgements to be made between
speed o release and data quality. For example, the Treasurys guidance on spending
data publication states that to produce timely data, inormation should be released as
it was originally recorded in nancial systems, unless there are material changes to the
data. While the Treasury has urged departments to improve the quality o the spend
data, and has required all main departments to produce data quality improvement plans,
it has not required them to disclose the level o data quality to the public. The lack o
common categorisation o spending, and late publication o data by many departments,
hinder comparability.
Supporting choice and accountability
8 I transparency is to better inorm choice and accountability, appropriate
data must be available in the frst place. There is variation in the scope and
completeness o inormation currently available. In some areas this limits the
potential benefts.
a With respect to inormation supporting individual choice, in education the
department collects and reports appropriate inormation to support parents in
choosing schools. In social care, by contrast, neither the Department o Health nor
its unded bodies collect and publish appropriate inormation on the comparative
costs and perormance o providers o community based care services or adults.
This data could help to support users in choosing how to spend personalised
budgets. While much o the data in this sector is held by private providers, the
Governments Open Public Services 2012 White Paper commits to publishing key
data about public services, user satisaction and the perormance o all providers
rom all sectors.
b With regards to community accountability, the police crime map provides much
more detailed recorded crime inormation than was previously available. However,
additional inormation is still needed, or example on police activity and resourcing
locally, or residents to hold neighbourhood police services to account more ully.
In local government, the Government has discontinued established perormance
rameworks. The local government sector is leading a new approach to dening
key indicators. It is not currently clear whether this approach will yield sucient
comparable perormance inormation to support meaningul public accountability.
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8 Summary Implementing transparency
Stimulating economic growth
9 The Government estimates that public data currently contributes 16 billion
annually to the UK economy. While this is the highest o the ew estimates
available o the scale o the public data market, all suggest that public data
holds economic value. TheAutumn Statement 2011 announced new transparency
commitments designed to extract additional economic growth rom public data,
including open data releases, arrangements or licensing specic large data sets and
commitments to consult. Commitments include releases o data not previously available,
and opening access to data previously traded. TheAutumn Statement 2011 also made a
commitment to establish the Open Data Institute which aims to help businesses exploit
opportunities created by public data release.
10 The Governments ability to maximise economic growth rom traded data
is constrained by current charging and licensing arrangements, and limited
understanding o potential benefts. Recent academic research indicates that making
all public inormation that is currently traded available without charge could potentially add
economic value in the region o 1.6 billion to 6.0 billion a year. The Government has
identied certain trading unds, such as the Met Oce and Ordnance Survey, as having
data that could stimulate additional economic growth i it was released as open data. The
business case or the releases o ree data announced in the Autumn Statement 2011
estimates net benets o 49 million over 20 years a small proportion o the value
estimated to be available across the public sector. Estimates o additional value arebased on highly uncertain assumptions about usage, demand and impacts on the
wider economy.
Elements needed to assess value or money
11 Departments have not monitored the costs o implementing transparency,
and have estimated costs only where associated with investment requiring a
business case. Estimates provided or this review suggest that the additional sta costs
o providing standard disclosures o pre-existing data range rom 53,000 to 500,000
annually by department. Examples, such as the police crime map, where departments
have repackaged inormation to promote greater accessibility and use has led to
urther costs: in this case set-up costs o 300,000 and annual running costs o more
than 150,000. However, there are also cases such as the releases o public weather
service data where the costs are minimal. While these costs are relatively modest, they
would be more substantial i additional inormation were collected to secure purposeul,
standardised inormation to ll the gaps noted in paragraph 8. Pursuit o transparency
objectives is thereore likely to increase cost pressures.
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Implementing transparency Summary 9
12 Few departments are tracking benefts o transparency a key requirementin monitoring success and learning what works. Public interest in dierent types
o data release has varied widely. The website www.data.gov.uk has had more than
1.75 million visits since it was launched in January 2010. However, more than our-ths
o its visitors leave rom either the home page or the data page on the website. This
suggests that they are not accessing data during their visit, although it does not take
account o other potential access points or the data, or example, linked third party
websites or applications. While many departments told us that there had been limited
interest in the standard releases, there has been much greater interest in releases
related to the operation o public services. The police crime map website has had an
estimated 47 million visits between February and December 2011. The Department or
Education has reported an 84 per cent increase in the use o its comparative data on
schools, compared with the same period last year, since it was consolidated in one
location and data were made more accessible.
13 Alongside potential benefts rom transparency, departments ace
risks, including:
risks to privacy when inormation is provided at more granular levels. Departments
have conducted privacy risk assessments where they saw privacy as an issue.
More generally, the Government commissioned an independent review to consider
how transparency can proceed while privacy is protected. The Cabinet Oce
intends to respond to its recommendations in a orthcoming White Paper;
raud risks with increased transparency around contracts and payment details
raud attempts to a value o 7 million directly related to transparency releases
have been ound in local government, highlighting the need or eective anti-raud
measures; and
other potential unintended consequences o transparency. Given the breadth
o inormation released as part o the transparency agenda, it is likely that wider
unintended consequences might result, but the Government has done little to identiy
or assess the nature and scale o any such eects, either benign or adverse.
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10 Summary Implementing transparency
Conclusion
14 The strategic case or greater transparency is strong. I it is to do more than satisy
public rights to public inormation, however, and contribute ully to objectives set or it
including accountability, service improvement, and growth, then the Government needs
a rmer grip on measuring the success o the initiative. While it has begun to gather
evidence o usage and benets arising rom the use o open data, it has not yet positioned
this within a wider, systematic evaluative ramework. Evidence on benets should be
considered alongside inormation on costs and risks to secure best value rom the large
stock o public data, match the range and presentation o data purposeully to ull specic
objectives, ensure that risks are identied and mitigated, and secure value or money.
Recommendations
a The Government cannot maximise the net benefts o transparency without
an evaluative ramework or measuring the success and value or money o
its transparency initiatives. It should build on its plans to identiy economic and
public service benets and develop:
a better understanding o the drivers and scale o additional costs o
implementing dierent types o public sector inormation release;
clearer means o determining demand to support objectives o greater
accountability, service improvement and economic growth, to prioritise the
programme o data release; and
a structured, objective evaluation o the emerging eects o transparent public
data, so that eorts are ocused on high-value activities, with unintended
consequences mitigated.
b The Government will not maximise the benefts o transparency i it does not
urther embed good practice principles. While the drat public data principles
set a useul direction or public bodies, the Government should now dene its
operational requirements more clearly. Areas such as developing data inventories
require clear direction so that they lead to benets or developers and the public.
c Many data releases have no accompanying statement as to their quality or
reliability running the risk o misleading potential users. The Government
should develop a simple protocol or describing data sources, control procedures
and known limitations.
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Implementing transparency Summary 11
d Public service users cannot exercise their choice and hold service providersto account i the Government ails to align transparency with choice and
accountability. It should:
review whether current data or choice and accountability purposes are
adequate, identiying gaps and ensuring that there is a clear strategy to make
necessary inormation available.
in developing and operating markets or public services, build requirements
or greater transparency o nancial and perormance inormation in uture
contractual arrangements.
e The Government cannot extract best value rom public sector inormation,i it does not improve on current estimates o the inormations value. These
estimates vary widely, hindering precise assessment o the various nancial
and economic actors associated with urther data releases, especially where
the Government currently charges or inormation. The Government should pursue
its plans or the development o a research base on the economic and public
service benets o public data, and use that to target the nature and orm o
data releases.
The Government has identifed that protecting personal data is a key risk or
transparency, commissioning a review to consider the issue. In responding
to the reviews recommendations, it should set out governance structures andprocesses required to manage this risk eectively.
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12 Part One Implementing transparency
Part One
Introduction
1.1 Successive governments have promoted more transparency o public sector
inormation. This has involved developing legislation, or example on reedomo inormation, and releasing more public sector inormation. Transparency is a
key component o the current Governments public services reorm programme.
The benets it expects to achieve include:
helping the public to hold public bodies to account;
improving value or money o public services; and
realising economic benets by helping third parties to develop applications
and services rom public data.1
Current government commitments
1.2 The Government has made three major policy announcements on transparency.
The Prime Minister wrote two open letters to government departments in May 2010
and Secretaries o State in July 2011. Figure 1 sets out key releases that all central
government departments have been asked to provide in these letters. Twenty-three o
twenty-ve commitments or central government, due by December 2011, had been
met by that month. The ChancellorsAutumn Statement 2011,2 in November 2011,
announced additional commitments, specically supporting economic growth
(see Part Four).
1.3 Alongside the standard requirements, the Government has also made a series ocommitments about service-specic data releases in areas including crime and justice,
international development, health, education and transport.3 Examples o recently
published data include sentencing data by court, and GP prescribing data by practice.
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Implementing transparency Part One 13
Governance arrangements
1.4 The Cabinet Oce is the lead policy department, with the ollowing main roles:
Overall coordination and monitoring. This includes dening the scope othe agenda and ormulating next steps. The Cabinet Oce has completed a
consultation on open data and is preparing a White Paper or spring 2012. It
monitors departmental compliance with transparency commitments and reports
progress to the Public Sector Transparency Board.
Secretariat to the Public Sector Transparency Board. The board advises,
supports and challenges public bodies in implementing transparency. It is
designed to ensure that users and experts have a voice in how transparency
initiatives are implemented.
Bringing together Whitehall ofcials to embed transparency across
government. The Cabinet Oce arranges a practitioners group and a senior
ocials group.
Shared responsibility with HM Treasury or policy and guidance to
departments on the standard transparency releases. HM Treasury leads on
policy or spending-related releases, while the Cabinet Oce leads on the other
standard releases outlined in the Prime Ministers letters on transparency.
Figure 1
Key standard transparency requirements or all government departments
Commitments in Prime Ministers letter to
government departments (May 2010)
Additional commitments in Prime Minister s
letter to Secretaries o State (July 2011)
New items o central government spending over
25,000 published monthly
All items o spending to include plain English
descriptions o their scope and purpose
All new central government contracts and tender
documents or contracts over 10,000
Spending on government procurement cards or
transactions o more than 500
Names, grades, job titles and pay rates or senior
civil servants and non-departmental public body
oicials with salaries higher than 58,200
All depar tments to work with Cabinet O ice to
produce an action plan or improving data quality
and comparability
Organograms or government departments
and agencies including all sta positions in a
common ormat
Source: Prime Ministers letters to government departments (May 2010) and Secretaries of State (July 2011)
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14 Part One Implementing transparency
1.5 Although the Cabinet Oce undertakes a lead role, other organisations haveresponsibilities that contribute to the agendas success, including other departments
who are responsible or their own data releases (Figure 2). Responsibilities or some
important elements o programme management are not clear. The Cabinet Oce did
not prepare an overall policy impact assessment at the outset, and there has been no
systematic eort to assess the costs o implementing transparency initiatives or the
benets that result.
Figure 2
Governance arrangements in central government or implementing
transparencyPublic body Key responsibilities
HM Treasury Leads on policy and issues guidance or standard spending-related
transparency commitments.
Department or Communities and
Local Government
Published The Code o Recommended Practice or Local Authorities
on Data Transparency,1 outlining its expectations o what local
authorities should publish.
Selected depar tments Work with the Cabinet O ice to agree scope o commitments in
Prime Ministers letters on transparency. Responsible or releasing
agreed data.
Operate sector-speciic transparency boards, which advise
departments on implementation.
The National Archives Has central pol icy responsibility or the re-use o public sector
inormation. Regulates and sets standards on the use and re-use o
public sector inormation and inormation management. Promotes
the re-use o public sector inormation through the UK Government
Licensing Framework and the Open Government Licence.
Inormation Commissioners Oice Regulates inormation rights legislation, including the Freedom o
Inormation Act. In the light o the transparency agenda, the Act is
being amended as part o the post-legislative review process to
create a new public right to data.
NOTE
1 Department or Communities and Local Government,The Code of Recommended Practice for Local Authoritieson Data Transparency, September 2011, available at www.communities.gov.uk/documents/localgovernment/
pd/1997468.pd
Source: National Audit Office
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Implementing transparency Part Two 15
Part Two
Progress o implementing transparency
2.1 This Part uses the drat public data principles as the basis to consider progress
o implementing the transparency agenda. The principles are not Government policy,but were developed by the Public Sector Transparency Board in June 2010 to highlight
areas o good practice, including:
promoting use o the Open Government Licence enabling unrestricted re-use
o public data;
use o a single government portal, www.data.gov.uk, or public data;
encouraging data release in ormats enabling easy analysis and reprocessing;
developing data inventories so that it is clear what inormation is available; and
ensuring releases are demand-led, and thereore responsive to the public.
2.2 The section also reviews areas o programme management which are crucial
to securing value or money, including the Governments understanding o the costs,
benets and risks o implementing transparency.
Licensing
2.3 The Government has made signicant progress in developing a non-restr ictive
Open Government Licence, and encouraging its adoption. Licensing is central to
promoting access and allowing data to be reused. The Open Government Licence,
launched in September 2010, orms part o the UK Government Licensing Frameworkand permits ree, permanent, non-exclusive access to material made available under the
licence. Analysis o data sets catalogued within www.data.gov.uk shows that 86 per cent
are available under the Open Government Licence (Figure 3 overlea).
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16 Part Two Implementing transparency
Use o a single government portal (www.data.gov.uk)
2.4 To acilitate access to public data, the previous Government launched the
www.data.gov.uk website, in January 2010, which indexes data releases in a single
searchable portal. The number o data sets indexed on www.data.gov.uk has grown
rom 2,500 in January 2010 to 7,865 by December 2011.
2.5 Although the volume o inormation catalogued by www.data.gov.uk has expanded,
realising its intended benets depends on:
whether the website links to as ull a range as possible o disclosable data. Owning
public bodies are responsible or linking data to the website. However, due to thelack o publication o data inventories (see section 2.12), it is not possible to assess
what proportion o the ull range o disclosable data is linked to the site; and
the structure and design o the website. For example, descriptive inormation about
each data release is currently not standardised and incomplete. Users will thereore
nd it dicult to identiy data sets that may be most useul.
Percentage
Figure 3
Licences for data sets on www.data.gov.uk
Source: Cabinet Office
0
20
40
60
80
100
UK Open
Government
Licence
Other/unknown Met Office UK
Climate Projections
Licence
86
131
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Implementing transparency Part Two 17
Figure 4
Formats of data resources on www.data.gov.uk
Machine-readable, non-proprietary
(e.g. csv) 68%
Machine-readable, but proprietary
(e.g. MS Excel) 19%
Format uses open standards
from World Wide Web consortium,
to enable linking (e.g. rdf) 7%
Non-machine readable
(e.g. jpeg, pdf) 6%
Source: National Audit Office analysis of Cabinet Office data
2.6 Since its public launch in January 2010, www.data.gov.uk has had more than1.75 million visits. However, rom May to November 2011, 82 per cent o all users
let www.data.gov.uk having only accessed either the home page or the data page.
This indicates that they did not nd the inormation they were seeking, although
this does not refect other potential access points or the data, or example linked
third party websites or applications. The Cabinet Oce has received user eedback
that the websites navigation and interace lack usability and appeal. It is currently
upgrading www.data.gov.uk, to include better search unctionality, a clearer standard
taxonomy o the inormation held and designing the catalogue entry process to limit
the scope or errors.
Format o data releases
2.7 How ar data can be easily analysed, reused and linked to other data sets depends
on its ormat. Three-quarters o the 13,000 data resources held on www.data.gov.uk are in
a machine-readable, non-proprietary ormat, meaning that they can be easily reprocessed
(Figure 4). Developers advised us that these attributes are sucient or the majority o
tasks they would normally need to undertake to develop applications.
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18 Part Two Implementing transparency
Compliance with specifc guidance on data sets
2.8 Standardising data enables comparative analysis. The Government has provided
guidance on the various standard data releases to encourage common structures.
One example is HM Treasury guidance on monthly itemised spending data, which
species content and provides direction on the timing o release, redactions, internal
review processes and data hosting arrangements. Mandatory content includes correctly
ormatted dates, amounts, expense types and suppliers.
2.9 Departments have complied with most mandatory elements o this guidance.
O 100 departmental spend data sets we reviewed, 78 per cent o the mandatory data
elds were ully compliant. The vast majority o non-compliant elds related to ormatting
issues. Other non-compliance related to expense types and expense areas not being
easily understood, hindering comparative analysis.
2.10 According to Treasury guidance, spend data should be published by the last
working day o the month ollowing the month to which the data relates. However, by the
end o 2011, 11 o 17 departments had not published data or November 2011 and seven
had not yet published the spend data or October 2011.
2.11 From September 2011, the updated guidance requires departments to include
brie plain English descriptions explaining the purpose o all transactions, to give more
contextual inormation. In the December 2011 releases, 8 o 11 departments included
a description eld in some orm in their releases but only our ully met the plain Englishrequirement by providing a clear description o all items listed.4
Using data inventories
2.12 The drat public data principles state that public bodies should maintain and
publish inventories providing accurate, up-to-date records o data holdings, including
inormation on ormats, accuracy and availability. Without these inventories, users
will not know the ull range o data collected and potentially available or release. The
Cabinet Oce has not yet provided operational guidance on how data inventories
should be developed. HM Revenue & Customs was the only department we identied
that has published a comprehensive list o data holdings with inormation on ormats,
accuracy and availability.5
Responsiveness to demand
2.13 The drat public data principles set a clear expectation that data releases, and
their ormats, should be demand-led. Nine departments told us that they have actively
considered public demand, or example through ormal consultations, orums on
websites including www.data.gov.uk, and analysis o correspondence, parliamentary
questions, media enquiries and Freedom o Inormation requests. There are some
examples o departments specically engaging with developers, or example throughworkshops or representation on some sector boards.
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Implementing transparency Part Two 19
2.14 The Cabinet Oce did not engage with the public to establish demand orthe standard data releases outlined in the Prime Ministers letters, but did consult
with developers and industry to identiy the additional releases announced in the
Autumn Statement 20116 (see paragraph 4.1).
2.15 None o the departments reported signicant spontaneous public demand or
the standard dataset releases. For example, page views or transparency data on the
Ministry o Justice website represented just 0.02 per cent o the overall site trac rom
April to September 2011. Service-specic releases have attracted greater interest. The
Department or Educations school website tool has received on average 45,000 views
per month in the rst two months since its release in September 2011. By comparison,
the transparency page on the Departments website, which includes links to its standarddata sets, received on average 600 views per month in the period rom April 2011
to October 2011. However, departmental gures do not include users o third party
websites or applications.
Understanding costs and benefts
Costs
2.16 Dierent types o data release have dierent cost implications, but neither the
Cabinet Oce nor other departments routinely collect data to monitor the additional
costs o transparency initiatives. The Government has assumed that the standard
releases required o all departments incur zero or very low costs, because they are
releasing inormation already held. Although this report does not estimate total costs,
this section illustrates some o the departmental and central costs incurred.
Departmental sta costs or standard releases
2.17 Departments noted that the biggest cost or standard releases was sta time
and that they had no systems to record that sta time oten a small element in many
ocials jobs. Eight departments, however, provided estimates o sta costs associated
with preparing and publishing the standard transparency requirements in 2011-12.
The costs range rom 53,000 to 500,000. These represent a lower bound or thecost o standard releases because they only capture sta costs and do not include,
or example, costs o upgrading IT systems or payments to contractors. While these
costs are low, relative to the total spending o the departments, they are incurred by
administrative unctions, such as Human Resources and Finance, where costs are
being cut signicantly.
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20 Part Two Implementing transparency
www.data.gov.uk2.18 The www.data.gov.uk website was originally run by the Central Oce o Inormation
and received unding o 1.2 million in 2010-11 rom the Department or Business,
Innovation and Skills. In 2011-12, the project was brought within the Cabinet Oce, and
urther engagement activity with stakeholders increased the annual running costs to
2 million. The Cabinet Oce hopes that improvements to the website (see paragraph 2.6)
will increase eciency and lower costs.
Costs o service-specifc releases
2.19 In addition to the costs o implementing standard requirements, departments with
sector-specic transparency commitments incur additional costs. Examples include:
the National Policing Improvement Agency produced street-level crime maps at a
cost o 300,000 and estimates the annual running costs or hosting, supporting
and maintaining the crime map site at more than 150,000.7 The Agency has
budgeted 216,000 in 2011-12 to urther develop the website, including linking
crime data to police and justice outcomes; and
the Department or International Development estimates that to deliver the
commitment to provide ull inormation on international development projects
with a value o more than 500 by January 2011, it incurred capital costs o
250,000, administrative set-up costs o 156,000 and has ongoing annual
running costs o 64,000.
2.20 While the above examples incurred relatively modest additional costs to make
existing inormation more publicly available, greater costs would be associated with
substantially developing new systems to provide public inormation where there are
currently gaps. The case examples in Part Three illustrate that in many sectors existing
inormation does not currently support individual choice or promote accountability.
Benefts
2.21Although the Government has wide-ranging objectives or transparency, ew
attempts have yet been made to monitor emerging benets. In its Making Open Data
Realconsultation, the Cabinet Oce identied six categories o potential benetsrom transparency,8 and its Open or Business website provides some examples o
businesses beneting rom open data.9 However, it is not yet using the six categories to
set out what would constitute success, to systematically track benets, or to promote
rigorous measurement, including identiying unintended consequences.
2.22 We asked all departments whether they had identied emerging benets rom
the transparency agenda. Seven departments told us that benets had materialised,
although they could not quantiy them. Examples include cost reductions in travel and
subsistence spending and identiying and resolving data quality problems.
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Implementing transparency Part Two 21
Risks and unintended consequences
Privacy
2.23 Linking data sets is central to the transparency agenda. While it can be expected
to generate benets, it might also mean that personal inormation is disclosed without
consent. The Government commissioned a review to consider the compatibility o
transparency and privacy.10 The review made 14 recommendations, or example, about
governance processes and research into anonymisation techniques. The Government
has not yet responded to the review.
2.24 Some existing releases, such as reoending data in criminal justice and GPprescribing data by practice, are based on individual-level data sets. For these releases,
the Ministry o Justice and the Department o Health respectively have carried out privacy
impact assessments to identiy and manage risks. Published data has been aggregated to
protect anonymity by banding data and so protecting individuals identities.
Fraud
2.25There are raud risks related to the release o itemised spending transaction data.
For example, raudsters can draw on such inormation in attempting to redirect payments
made to legitimate suppliers. The Audit Commission has reported that councils detected
rauds o this type amounting to 7 million in 2010-11. Such risks can, however, bemitigated by eective nancial controls which oiled 20 million o raud attempts in the
same period.11
2.26The Government has taken steps to raise the prole o raud prevention in local
government, including the publication o a raud prevention strategy addressing the need
or better prevention and enorcement.12 In addition, the Department or Communities and
Local Government has reerred local authorities to raud prevention advice published by
the Chartered Institute o Public Finance and Accountancy.13
Data quality
2.27The Cabinet Oce requirement or all departments to produce data quality action
plans by November 2011 has been deerred. The overall transparency agenda involves
public bodies releasing multiple types o inormation. The range covers data approved
as ocial statistics, which are subject to data protocols and reviews, to data sets taken
directly rom operational systems. There is variation in the intended accuracy o data sets,
and degrees o control. In some cases, there are judgements to be made between the
speed o release and data quality. The Treasurys guidance on itemised spending data
states explicitly that to produce timely data, inormation should be released as it was
originally recorded in nancial systems, unless there are material changes to the data.
Disclosures about data quality or these releases are not required.14 However, in January
2011 the Treasury required all main departments to produce data quality improvement
plans outlining steps to improve the standardisation and quality o spend data.
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22 Part Three Implementing transparency
Part Three
Aligning transparency with choice andaccountability
3.1 The Governments reorm programme promotes greater choice and accountability.
Transparency is central to these reorms and the Government has said that it will
ensure that key data about public services, user satisaction and the perormance o all
providers rom all sectors is in the public domain in an accessible orm. This will include
data on user satisaction, spending, perormance and equality.15
3.2 To support individuals in choosing appropriate providers and holding public
bodies and providers to account, we consider that the ollowing types o inormation
are needed:
Descriptive inormation about providers, or example location and provider type.
Objective, standardised activity and perormance inormation that sets out the
levels o services provided and their quality.
Inormation about perormance based on peoples experiences, or example user
satisaction inormation.
Inormation on spending, enabling analysis o links between spending
and perormance.
Contextual inormation about data, including quality disclosure, to
assist interpretation.
3.3 The current state o inormation release, according to these criteria, is patchy. There
is variation in how ar current data helps people to make inormed choices, and helps
communities and neighbourhoods to understand the perormance o public services in
their area. The ollowing examples illustrate this variation.
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Implementing transparency Part Three 23
Choice in individual services
Inormation to help choose schools
3.4 The Government stated in its recent schools White Paper that parents ability
to choose a school will be enhanced by more standardised inormation on schools.16
The Department or Education (the Department) has developed a schools per ormance
web tool that brings together established and new data releases in a single location
on its website.17
3.5 The website helps parents to compare schools at the same stage o education,
based on most types o inormation needed to support choice as set out inparagraph 3.2. The tool provides:
key descriptive inormation, including school type and capacity, pupil and
workorce characteristics;
comparable inormation on school perormance, including exam results or all key
stages and new data on pupil perormance, by low, middle and high attainers.
The site also links to Osted reports and inspection results; and
inormation on school nances. The tool provides income and spending data, or
example, spending on teaching sta.
3.6 The website does not provide parents or childrens eedback on their experiences
o the school. Users can, however, access Osted inspection reports, which oten
contain summaries o the views o parents, children and governors. Osted also
launched its Parent View website in October 2011 to collect and report parents
eedback on schools.18
3.7 The inormation provided is standardised and comparable across all schools in
England, with the ollowing exceptions:
Spending data or academies is not recorded according to the categorisation
used or school-level nancial data included in the tool. The Department intends
to publish academies nancial data on a comparable basis in 2012. Where
academies are ederated under one academy trust, the data will be made
available at academy trust level rather than individual school level.
The Department does not col lect or publish certain data or independent schools,
or example on key stage 2 attainment (because key stage 2 tests and external
marking are optional), or pupil characteristics.
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24 Part Three Implementing transparency
3.8 To support parental choice, the school perormance tables provide in one placepreviously diuse perormance data. The level o public interest in that inormation
has increased. The Department has reported that interaction with the website tool
increased by 84 per cent in the last year, with 2.43 million views rom September to
November 2011, compared with 1.3 million views or the corresponding inormation
in the same period o 2010.
Inormation to help choose care services
3.9 The Governments objective is or all those eligible or ongoing community based
social care to be provided with a personal budget by April 2013, to give publicly
unded users o social care services greater choice and control over their own care.With personal budgets, eligible recipients requiring community based care services
can purchase services rom public, private or third sector providers. With access to
the right inormation, it can be expected that care users, or those choosing providers
on their behal, can make better use o the discretion inherent in personal budgets.
This is particularly important, given recent reports raising concerns about some users
experiences o care.19
3.10 Many adult social care users do not currently have all the necessary inormation to
make inormed choices about care providers. This includes:
Basic inormation about care providers. This data is currently provided by localauthorities and the Care Quality Commission.
Comparable inormation about the quality o providers. The Care Quality
Commission registers and inspects social care providers based on 16 minimum
essential standards o quality and saety. The Commission publishes results or all
providers on its website. However, the standard inormation does not dierentiate
on the basis o quality, beyond the minimum standards.
User eedback on providers. Some local authorities are providing, or are planning
to provide, websites that capture and share users experiences o care. However,
not all authorities provide this inormation and it is not standardised.
Inormation about the price o care services. It can be dicult to provide price
inormation, because prices dier across the country and vary according to the
specic, and oten complex, care needs o the individual user, as well as the
service oered by the care provider. One local authority we visited is planning to
provide inormation on price ranges on their website. Another will ask users o
their web tool to rst sel-assess their needs and care budget and then suggest
providers that provide services within these budgets.
3.11 Inormation supporting choice o community based care services is very varied
across local authorities. There is currently no standard inormation on the relative quality
o registered providers. I expanding user choice is to result in more cost-eectiveservice provision, users will need a broader range o comparable inormation
to inorm their choice.
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Implementing transparency Part Three 25
Accountability or neighbourhood and community services
Police crime map
3.12 In June 2010, the Government announced that it would publish crime data at street
level to allow the public to better hold the police to account. 20 The police crime map
website was launched on 31 January 2011 to ull this commitment.21
3.13 The crime map website provides the ollowing inormation:
Basic inormation about neighbourhood policing team and local police orce.
The crime map proles members o local neighbourhood police teams and
provides contact details and inormation about beat meetings, where residents
can communicate directly with their neighbourhood team.
Comparable inormation about crime levels. The crime map provides monthly data
or 11 crime categories or each street with eight or more postal addresses, unless
there are additional privacy concerns. Users can compare crime levels with other
neighbourhoods, police orce areas or national averages. The Government has
pledged to develop the crime map urther so that by May 2012, the public can
see police actions taken and justice outcomes or each crime.
Links to Her Majestys Inspectorate o Constabulary police orce proles, which
include victim satisaction scores, and details o nances and spending, or eachpolice orce. However, this inormation is not broken down to ward level and the
public is not able to compare spending inormation at the neighbourhood level to
consider neighbourhood resourcing and deployment decisions, and to compare
these with perormance.
3.14 Although the crime map allows the public to view more detailed inormation on
the location o criminal activity than ever beore, there are two key concerns about the
quality and accuracy o the data:
To protect privacy, street-level crime maps aggregate crime data and map it to
an anonymous point, typically the geographical centre o a street. For example,
where there are ewer than eight postal addresses on a street, the crimes may be
repositioned to a nearby street. This can be misleading i crimes are attributed to
a dierent location rom where they were reported, or example a nightclub. To
mitigate this problem, the crime map has, since January 2012, included locations
such as nightclubs to which crimes can be attributed.
While the Home Oce sets central standards governing how the police should
record crime, several reports have highlighted concerns about lack o consistent
recording o crime across police orces.22 As the data on the crime map is provided
by each police orce, any quality issues with the way the crimes are recorded are
replicated within the crime map. The crime map website includes a disclaimer
about these general data quality issues, but does not link to specic inormation
that enables a user to judge the robustness o recorded crime data in their area.
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26 Part Three Implementing transparency
3.15 Beore the launch o the crime map, the National Policing Improvement Agencyconducted research, which showed that people ound local police inormation and
crime maps inormative, and that greater knowledge o recorded local crime would not
increase ear o crime. However, while the Home Oce is taking steps to monitor and
support the development o the crime map, it is not undertaking a systematic evaluation
to determine its impact. Given the nature o the crime map, it may potentially drive wide-
ranging behavioural responses. Existing sources may permit some relevant analyses:
the British Crime Survey, or example, provides the Home Oce with an opportunity to
analyse any dierences in peoples experiences or reporting o crime, depending on
their reported awareness or use o crime maps.
3.16 The police crime map represents a signicant step in providing inormation thatcan support better local accountability o police services. There has been a high level
o demand rom the public with an estimated 47 million visits between February and
December 2011. Closer alignment between the crime maps and reporting o police
activity and resource use would tighten accountability urther. Evaluating the maps
eects intended and unintended would help assess the benets and manage risks.
Local government accountability
3.17 Under the Coalition Government, the Department or Communities and Local
Government has prioritised decentralisation and localism. The Department expects local
communities and individuals to hold local public service bodies to account or theiruse o resources.23 There have been signicant changes in the types o inormation
that communities and individuals can access. Local authorities have been encouraged
to make new inormation transparent, while established rameworks or collecting and
reporting perormance inormation have been discontinued.
Transparency in local government
3.18 The Governments approach to encouraging transparency in local government is
set out in its Code o Recommended Practice or Local Authorities on Data Transparency,
which it published in September 2011.24 It sets out minimum expectations or data release
among local public bodies. With respect to the requirement to publish expenditure over
500, all councils have published data on their spending transactions with one exception,
Nottingham City Council. We reviewed how ar other key elements o theCode have been
adopted, based on a sample o more than 200 English councils (Figure 5).
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Implementing transparency Part Three 27
3.19 There is variation in how ar councils provide relevant inormation. To an extent,
this refects that some Code elements were not part o the drat Code, and thereorethe Governments expectation o publication o these items is more recent. However,
even or items where inormation is published, many o the releases do not include all o
the inormation set out in the Code. For example, although 88 per cent o councils have
published senior pay inormation, more than hal o these releases do not describe the
numbers o sta reporting to them or the budgets that they control.
3.20 We also reviewed whether councils had published their expenditure data over
500 timeously and in machine-readable ormats. O the 202 councils we reviewed,
89 per cent have published the data by month, with one example o weekly releases and
91 per cent have published data in a non-proprietary, machine-readable ormat. At the
time o our review, 80 per cent had produced data rom the previous month, though in7 per cent o cases, spending transaction data were our or more months old.
Figure 5
Proportion of local authorities releasing data in the
Code of Recommended Practice
Percentage
NOTES
1 Based on a review of 202 local authority websites undertaken in November 2011.
2 Tender and contract information includes information published on external websites.
Source: National Audit Office analysis
0 20 40 60 80 100
Asset register
Organisational charts
Contracts
Tenders
Senior pay
Committee minutes
Election results
Constitution 98
96
95
88
88
71
63
5
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28 Part Three Implementing transparency
Perormance inormation in local government3.21 While the Government has encouraged greater transparency in local government,
it has discontinued many o the existing arrangements or perormance reporting.
For example, the Government has stopped the National Indicator Set, along with some
o its component data collections such as the Place Survey. Existing repositories o
comparative data, such as the Audit Commissions OnePlace website, are no longer
supported or updated.
3.22The Department or Communities and Local Government (the Department) has
published a Single Data List cataloguing all o the data that councils must provide to
central government. However, the Department considers that the publication o this
inormation is not currently done in a way that allows or easy comparison betweencouncils across a range o service areas, making it hard or residents to assess relative
perormance and value or money.
3.23The Departments preerred approach is or the local government sector to address
this gap. The Local Government Association (LGA) in conjunction with local authorities is
developing an online tool, LG Inorm, which draws together comparative data to enable
perormance benchmarking and other analysis. The LGA expects to make the service
available to the public in September 2012. The tool currently includes approximately
750 metrics in total, covering a range o services.
3.24 In the uture, LG Inorm will allow local authorities to add voluntary additional datato the system. This is consistent with the principles o localism and reducing centrally
prescribed perormance data. However, voluntary data will need to be managed
careully i it is to provide meaningul inormation or perormance measurement and
accountability. For example, there is a tension between local bodies developing
their own measures o perormance and user satisaction, and the demands o the
public and local perormance managers or comparable, benchmarked inormation.
Such inormation requires uniorm standards and denitions.
3.25 Implementing greater transparency in local government provides new items
o nancial and operational inormation or the public. However, although the Code
o Recommended Practice provides direction, there are still signicant variations inhow councils report this inormation. The Government has discontinued established
perormance rameworks. It considers that it is primarily or councils themselves
to respond to citizens requirements, and or the sector as a whole to develop an
appropriate system to allow or perormance benchmarking. Through the LGA, the local
government sector is leading on a tool, LG Inorm, to address this issue, but this will not
be available to the public until September 2012. It is too early to determine whether this
will meet the perormance inormation needs o residents.
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Implementing transparency Part Four 29
Part Four
Aligning transparency with economic growth
4.1 A key objective o releasing more public sector inormation is to generate economic
growth. The Government made a series o announcements relating to this objective initsAutumn Statement 2011,25 including:
new open data commitments, such as real-time running inormation on trains
rom Network Rail, to support developing web-based applications enabling more
productive use o passengers time;
new commitments or licensing large data sets, including the Clinical Practice
Research Datalink service which will provide linked, non-identiable patient level
primary and secondary health data. The Government expects this to promote
growth in the lie sciences research sector, or example, by reducing the costs
o clinical trials;
commitments to consult, or example, on linking welare data to other public
and commercial data to develop data and analytics markets relating to
customer inormation;
new governance arrangements to oversee access to data held by trading unds
(see paragraph 4.7); and
establishing an Open Data Institute to develop business innovation and exploit
commercial opportunity rom releasing public data. The institute will receive
10 million unding rom the Technology Strategy Board over the current spending
review period, with matched unding rom industry and academia.
4.2 While most announcements were or uture commitments, the Government made
a series o data sets available with theAutumn Statement 2011, or example, detailed
weather observation and orecast inormation (see paragraph 4.11). However, many
outlined measures continue to be developed. It is thereore too early to conclude on
their likely success. This section instead considers the variations in estimates o the
economic value o public sector inormation and reviews some o the arrangements the
Government has announced to stimulate growth rom public data.
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30 Part Four Implementing transparency
Estimates o economic value o public sector inormation
4.3 Few studies have attempted to estimate the economic value o public sector
inormation. Studies that have been carried out suggest a strong strategic economic
case or enabling greater access to public sector inormation. However, the scale o
the various estimates varies widely, owing to dierences in approaches to benets
estimation and the assumptions o the economic models used.
4.4 A recent review o the literature on reusing public sector inormation put the value
o public sector inormation in the European Union at around 140 billion a year. The
author based the estimates on extrapolating rom studies o the total economic impacts
o geospatial inormation in Australia and New Zealand.26 Based on this review, the
Government derived an estimate o 16 billion or the current total economic value o UK
public sector inormation.27
4.5 The Oce o Fair Trading produced an earlier study in 2006 on the commercial use
o public sector inormation.28 They surveyed more than 400 public bodies to identiy
the income generated rom public data release. They also commissioned research to
estimate the economic value o UK public sector inormation. Based primarily on the
survey results, the contractors estimated this value to be about 590 million in 2005.
4.6 Both studies have limitations. The Oce o Fair Trading report notes that top-down
approaches, such as that used in the EU-wide estimate, tend to overstate the economic
value o public service inormation. This is because they do not actor in reasonablesubstitutes available i that inormation does not exist or is prohibitively expensive.29
Furthermore, the assumption o similar public sector inormation markets is crude given
signicant known dierences between countries. However, the Oce o Fair Trading
report is likely to understate the economic value o public sector inormation. Their
survey, and thereore the economic estimate, did not include all bodies likely to hold
data o economic value or example NHS trusts and local authorities. The Oce o Fair
Tradings report also pre-dates the extra datasets that have been released since 2006
as open data. When estimates o economic value vary this widely, it is dicult to assess
the scale o eort or targeting needed to best build on that value.
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Implementing transparency Part Four 31
Getting extra value rom public sector inormation
4.7 Data expected to have economic value includes data that has not previously
been made available, and data that has been traded but could be released under
less restrictive terms. Examples o the ormer include the healthcare inormation to
be made available to support the lie sciences sector and other health services. The
Department o Healths business case or a new Clinical Practice Research Datalink
estimates benets o 446 million, with costs o 275 million over ten years. The benet
gure mainly comprises eciency savings rom reducing the costs o medical studies
and does not include wider economic benets, such as potential job creation in the lie
sciences industry. The Government intends to charge users to cover the costs o the
data linking process.
4.8 For the release o practice level prescribing data, the impact assessment estimates
the costs o the publication to be 450,000 in the rst year and 100,000 in subsequent
years. The Government expects that the release will lead to increased innovation in the
pharmaceutical industry. It also expects that publication will generate eciency savings
as increased transparency o prescribing patterns encourages better prescribing.
However, the impact assessment does not monetise the economic benets, describing
them as dicult to measure and speculative.
4.9 Data known to have economic value include those already traded. Data held by
the Ordnance Survey, Met Oce, Land Registry and Companies House trading unds
accounted or 60 per cent o all income received or public data in 2006. A recent
academic paper, based on the 2006 Oce o Fair Trading survey o income earned rom
public data, estimates potential gains rom moving rom charged-or to an open data
regime in the UK o between 1.6 billion and 6.0 billion a year.30 Their data are particularly
economically valuable and are oten reerred to as core reerence data. This includes
maps, address databases, land records and weather data, which provide opportunities
or linking to other data sets to enhance their value. However, established licensing
arrangements can provide barriers to use, limiting the potential or economic benets.
4.10 Trading unds must break even over a time period specied in their Trading Fund
Order. Current revenue rom selling data, as opposed to other services, varies by
trading und. A 2008 study commissioned by the Department or Business, Enterprise
and Regulatory Reorm (now the Department or Business, Innovation and Skills) and
HM Treasury estimated that the Met Oce would lose around 1 per cent o its revenue
were it to make raw data available or ree, while at the other extreme, the Ordnance
Survey would lose 26 per cent o its revenue rom data sales to non-government
sources.31 The potential nancial implications o ree data release thereore vary widely
across the unds.
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32 Part Four Implementing transparency
4.11 As a rst step, the Government has announced some releases rom these tradingunds as open data. Examples include weather orecast and real-time observation
datasets, and prices paid or residential property in England and Wales. The business
case or this release estimated economic benets o 60 million, with additional wider
social welare benets o between 6 million and 27 million, over 20 years. This
compares with costs o about 11 million over that period. Releasing the Met Oce
weather data sets make up 84 per cent o the total economic benets.32 We tested
whether the business case complied with good practice in central government, and
ound that:
neither the Met Oce nor the Cabinet Oce has assessed the impact o releasing
weather data as open data on the wider market, so the benets included in thebusiness case are highly uncertain;
it does not cover costs other than implementation costs and the loss o income
due to ree release o data sets previously charged or. For example, additional
revenue loss may be expected rom increased service competition rom new
commercial applications; and
or the nancial year 2012-13, the estimated revenue losses or the trading unds lie
between 5,000 or the Met Oce and 600,000 or the Land Registry. Based on
revenue currently obtained rom statutory and commercial data sales, this suggests
that the planned releases represent only a part o the economically valuable data
sets held across the our trading unds.
4.12 The Government announced in itsAutumn Statement 2011 new governance
arrangements or the our trading unds. They will orm a Public Data Group and
continue their trading unctions. A separate Data Strategy Board will promote release o
open data. It will receive at least 7 million in the current spending review period to buy
data rom the Public Data Group or wider public sector or ree release. In uture, the
Data Strategy Board will seek to agree a proportion o dividends rom the Public Data
Group, to increase its unding. The Cabinet Oce has not yet produced broader policy
on open data rom trading unds.
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Implementing transparency Appendix One 33
Appendix One
Methodology
Method Purpose
Survey o and interviews with 16 departments33
and wider stakeholders described in Figure 2
To collect inormation on transparency arrangements
Interviews with the Cabinet Oices
Transparency team
To determine the Cabinet O ices role in the
transparency agenda, and to collect inormation on the
progress o implementation
Document review o central and departmental
strategic and operational plans or transparency
initiatives
To supplement interv iew evidence
Case studies. Analysis o schools, community
based care services or adults, police, and local
government sectors
To review case examples o how inormation is
provided to the public or accountability purposes, and
in support o wider reorms
Consultation with developers and the media To understand the perspectives o intermediaries in
realising potential beneits o transparency
Review o central and local government
data releases
To assess compliance with Treasury guidance on
departmental spending data, and or councils with the
Department or Communities and Local Governments
Code o Recommended Practice
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34Appendix Two Implementing transparency
Appendix Two
Timeline o transparency achievements anduture aspirations
Prepared by the Cabinet Ofce
The Transparency Agenda is a coalition pledge championed by the Prime Minister to
make the Government more open. Every department o state and each arms-length
body shares responsibility as part o this Governments 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 o the work so ar the public now has unprecedented access to data in
government spend, transport, health, justice, crime and education. Much o this
inormation is available on www.data.gov.uk, one o the largest government data
resources in the world. We have also positioned Open Data as an integral part o the
UKs economic growth strategy, announcing an ambitious package o measures in the
ChancellorsAutumn Statement 2011.
Transparency and Open Data represent new ways o doing government. Thereore,
as this agenda develops, we will continue to build the economic benet case,
demonstrating how these core operating principles can lead to new economic growth
and greater eciency within the public sector.
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Implementing transparency Appendix Two 35
Achieved
May 2010 First Prime Minister let ter on transparency which included commitments or
departments to publish senior sta salary details and data on central and local
government spending.
June 2010 Public Sector Transparency Board, chaired by Minister or the Cabinet O ice
and consisting o public sector data specialists, meets or the irst time to drive
orward transparency agenda.
February 2011 Launch o police.uk by the Home O ice which gives the public unprecedented
access to crime data across the whole o England and Wales. Over 47 million
visits since inception.
July 2011 Second Prime Minister let ter 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 o government data.
Data on apprenticeships paid or by the Government released by Department
or Education.
August 2011 Launch o Making Open Data Real consultation which set out proposals or the
Governments Transparency and Open Data Strategy.
AugustOctober 2011 Nearly ive hundred responses to the Making Open Data Real consultation received
rom a variety o sectors such as health, industry, local and central government.
October 2011 Reo ending rates data published by Ministry o Justice.
Free government data sets rom Transport Direct published alongside road works
data on strategic road network published by Department or Transport.
Hospital complaints data published by NHS Inormation Centre.
November 2011 Launch o Open Data Measures in the Autumn Statement. These included
establishing a Data Strategy Board and a Public Data Group that will maximise
the value o the data rom the Met Oice, Ordnance Survey, the Land Registry
and Companies House.
Sentencing by court data made available by Ministry o Justice.
December 2011 7,865 data sets on www.data.gov.uk.
Twenty-three out o twenty-ive commitments or central government in the Prime
Ministers letters due by December 2011 are met.
Inaugural meeting o the Transparency Senior Oicials group which coordinates
progress o transparency agenda across individual government departments.
Publication o prescribing data by GP practices by NHS Inormation Centre.
Publication o clinical outcomes data by NHS Inormation Centre.
Real-time data on strategic road network (speed congestion) and weekly rail
timetable data released by Department or Transport.
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36Appendix Two Implementing transparency
Achieved continued
January 2012 Publication o summary o responses to Making Open Data Real consultat ion
alongside substantive consultation responses.
Department or Education brings together school spending data, school
perormance data, pupil cohort data and Osted judgements, in a parent-riendly
portal, searchable by postcode.
March 2012 Cabinet O ice and Department or Business, Innovation and Skil ls publishes the
terms o reerence or Data Strategy Board.
Department or Transport releases a range o highways and traic data via the
Roadworks website, which includes data to help reduce congestion and enable
business to make more predictable travel and logistics decisions.
Publication oOpen or Business which set out how open data is already
uelling 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
April 2012 Network Rai l and the Traveline will work with the transpor t industry to make
available timetable and real-time train and bus inormation to support the
development o innovative applications to improve passenger journeys.
Publication o the business plan or the Open Data Institute (ODI). The ODI willinnovate, exploit and research the opportunities or the United Kingdom created
by the Governments Open Data policy. In addition the ODI will develop the
economic beneits case and business model or Open Data.
United Kingdom to take over co-chairmanship o the Open Government
Partnership rom the United States. The Open Government Partnership is a
multilateral initiative with more than 50 member countries that aims to secure
concrete commitments rom governments to promote transparency, empower
citizens, ight corruption, and harness new technologies to promote prosperity
and reduce inequalities.
Department o Health to release data about the quality o postgraduate
medical education.
Clinical audits and NHS sta satisaction data released by Department o Health.
Mid-2012 Cabinet O ice to publish Transparency and Open Data products set ting out
the Governments vision or embedding Transparency and Open Data as core
operating principles o the public services. These products will include a ormal
response to the Kieron OHara report on privacy and transparency.
Cabinet Oice will continue to build an evidence base to demonstrate how
increased transparency can promote economic growth and greater eiciency
within the public sector.
Individual departmental Open Data Strategies due or publication.
www.data.gov.uk will be rereshed alongside ongoing work with government
departments to help them improve quality o their metadata (inormation about
the data) and to increase the portolio o their published datasets.
Home Oice to release Crime Mapper to Justice Mapper data.
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Implementing transparency Appendix Two 37
Planned continued
June 2012 Depar tment or Education to open up access to anonymised data rom the
National Pupil Database.
September 2012 Health and Social Care Inormation Centre will provide a service link to primary
and secondary healthcare datasets to reinorce the UKs position as a global
centre or research and analytics and boost UK lie sciences.
NHS Inormation Centre will publish urther prescribing data.
Open Data Institute due to open.
During and
beyond 2012
Department or Work and Pensions and Cabinet Oice via the new Welare
Sector Transparency Board will consider opportunities or securely linking welare
datasets to other government and commercial datasets to increase their value to
the industry.
Department or Work and Pensions will consult on the content o anonymised
it note data rom 2012 to drive innovation in the occupational health sector and
improve management o sickness absence.
Department or Work and Pensions will design the Universal Credit system so that
aggregate beneits data can be published during the irst year o the live running o
the system.
Department or Health will ensure all NHS patients can access their personal GP
records online by the end o this Parliament.
Department or Transport plans to legislate to give the Civil Aviation Authority thepower to publish data on the perormance o aviation service providers.
The Cabinet Oice will set up an Open Data User Group (ODUG) to support the
work o the new Data Strategy Board (DSB). The ODUG will advise the DSB on
public sector data that should be prioritised or release as open data.
Note: planned release dates are correct at the time o going to press.
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38Appendix Two Implementing transparency
Specic responsibilities o departments are set out in a number o documents, includingthe Prime Ministers letters o May 2010, and July 2011, and in departmental Open Data
Strategies which detail current and planned data releases that departments themselves
are responsible or delivering. Open Data Strategies are due or publication or the rst
time later in the year and will be included in departments business plans and rereshed
yearly thereater.
The Cabinet Oce also has a small strategic team that aims to provide strategic
leadership on this agenda, and specically is responsible or:
Bringing together ocials rom across government to help promote and deliver
transparency agenda.
Advising the Government on the progress o 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 o Justice to look at the
legislative landscape around transparency agenda.
Setting up the Open Data User Group to provide advice on release o Open Data to
the Data Strategy Board.
Setting up the Open Data Institute.
Developing policy in areas specied in the timeline.
Cabinet Ofce
April 2012
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Implementing transparency Endnotes 39
Endnotes
1 Cabinet Oce, Transparency-overview. www.cabinetoce.gov.uk/content/
transparency-overview
2 HM Treasury,Autumn Statement 2011, available at http://cdn.hm-treasury.gov.uk/
autumn_statement.pd
3 Prime Ministers letter to Cabinet Ministers on transparency and open data,July 2011, available at www.number10.gov.uk/news/letter-to-cabinet-ministers-on-
transparency-and-open-data/
4 By February 2012, six departments had not yet provided their spending data or
December 2011.
5 Available at www.hmrc.gov.uk/transparency/implementation-plan.htm
6 HM Treasury, Autumn Statement 2011, available at http://cdn.hm-treasury.gov.uk/
autumn_statement.pd
7 This excludes sta costs o the National Policing Improvement Agency crimemap team.
8 Cabinet Oce, Making Open Data Real: A Public Consultation, August 2011.
9 The website is available at http://communities.maven-cast.com/pg/groups/3731
10 K OHara, Transparent Government, Not Transparent Citizens: A Report on Privacy
and Transparency or the Cabinet Ofce, Cabinet Oce, 2011.
11 Audit Commission, Protecting the public purse, 2011, p. 21.
12 Home Oce, Fighting Fraud Locally: The Local Government Fraud Strategy,
April 2012, available at www.homeoce.gov.uk/publications/agencies-public-
bodies/na/ghting-raud-locally-strategy/. The Department or Communities and
Local Government also