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Posts tagged ‘government’

Aug 4

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Introduction to the power of open data

Where Does My Money Go?As some of you may know I’ve been working with the Where Does My Money Go? team over the last month or so, helping with the communications side of things.

Where Does My Money Go? (WDMMG) is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation, a “not-for-profit organization promoting open knowledge: that’s any kind of information – sonnets to statistics, genes to geodata – that can be freely used, reused, and redistributed.”

WDMMG gathers, analyses and visualises UK government spending data with the aim of making that information more usable and useful – for tax payers, journalists, businesses, researchers, policy makers, politicians and more. The aim is to make government spending as transparent as possible to hold the government to account but also to enable more informed decision making in the long run.

It’s a fascinating project and is part of a wider open data trend and movement that has been gathering pace over the last few years.

One of the main protagonists in this area is father of the web Tim Berners-Lee, who is famed for getting the 2009 TED conference audience to shout “Raw Data Now!”.

So as a way of introducing the concept of open data and it’s potential power, this five minute video by Tim at this year’s TED conference is worth viewing:

UPDATE 5/08/2010: Apparently TBL’s shout of “Raw Data Now!” was based on a meme that started with this Open Knowledge Foundation blog post, and which Tim cites here.

Feb 26

UK government must improve its use of technology

So concludes the RSA’s Technology in a Cold Climate Report, stating that, “Central government must dramatically improve its use of technology if it is to cut the public sector deficit”.

Given the forthcoming general election and the re-examination of budgets that will happen as a matter of course – who ever wins – the report suggests ways that technology might help the continuing delivery of services across the UK with less money in the pot.

Examples of how government can do this are given as:

* delivering more public services online to reduce costs and environmental impact
* learning from low-cost websites built by both third sector organisations and private companies
* using well-designed platforms to harness the knowledge and experience of large populations to democratically improve service provision.

The report is critical of procurement processes and also of the implementation of technology and innovative ideas:

“The UK considers itself an advanced-knowledge economy, but although it has some excellent innovation policies and mechanisms, it does not seem to have implemented these well, leading to lower levels of R&D investment and a poor record of exploiting knowledge to full advantage.
We suggest that the UK’s position is critically assessed, and that innovation policies are more proactively evaluated throughout their lifetime.”

In addition, the report calls on ministers to ensure that “everyone across the UK will benefit from the next generation of high-speed broadband as a platform for future growth and innovation”.

For anyone interested in economics, public policy, technology and innovation this is worth reading.

Click here to read the report in full.

Nov 2

Event notes: an Interconnected Society

Last week I was asked by Jamie Young at the RSA to chair the Interconnected Society session of the Technology in a Cold Climate summit. (See this previous post for the overall outline and the day’s schedule).

Refreshingly, the point of the day was for everyone in attendance to work hard, roll our sleeves up and get involved. Fuller accounts of the day can be found at the RSA blog specifically set up for the research.

The day started with an opening keynote (see video below) from Stephen Timms, Minister for Digital Britain, who reminded us that this was the third time he’d held such a role but also outlined the current digital landscape in the UK and how it affects society and the economy.

Professor John Farrington presents his research. Photo by Paul Henderson

Each proceeding session was then a workshop, with the aim of all the participants contributing to the final report after hearing the research papers given by the academics.

The Interconnected Society session started with Professor John Farrington presenting his research outlining the potential to be gained through having interconnected society. As well as looking at the benefits that such a society could bring he also examined the existing multiple digital divides (technical, geographical, social, economic, cultural, not-connection, connection but disconnection from other social spheres) and issues in rural areas.

This presentation was formally responded to by Julian David of IBM and Graham Walker of the government’s Digital Inclusion task force. Paul Henderson recorded the whole session’s activity, which can be viewed and read here.

We then split into found groups to discuss the presentations and to try to make some recommendations for the final RSA report.

What follows are two of the group’s responses and an interview that David Wilcox made with Professor John Farrington and I.

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