This week we launched our Technology Manifesto. Its aim is to return the UK to the first rank of technology-driven economies.
An economy in which entrepreneurs as well as large companies will wish to build their businesses and futures.
Our plans to open up government data and spending information will not only help us to cut wasteful spending, but according to new research by Dr Rufus Pollock of Cambridge University – the lead author of the HM Treasury report on the economic value of open data – it will also create an estimated £6bn in additional value for the UK. This boost to British jobs will come from the synergies and positive benefits that result from businesses and social entrepreneurs building new applications and services using previously locked-up government data.
Absolutely crucial to our vision for the new Britain is data transparency. We are passionate about the genuinely transformative powers of free data to open up new opportunities for businesses and to make it easier for the public to scrutinise how the government is spending their money. The era of closed shop government is over.
Together in our technology manifesto for the first time is the raft of policies we have which aim to open up government, the most of important of which is our proposal to introduce a ‘Right to Data’. A Right to Data means that the public can request and receive government data sets, which they feel will be socially or economically useful.
To open up government spending to public scrutiny, we will publish online, and in an open and standardised format, every item of central government and Quango expenditure over £25,000. Our understanding is that the data quality is currently not very good, but we want to get this done as quickly as possible, so to begin with, we will publish the government COINS database. We will publish government contracts for goods and services worth over £25,000 in full, including all performance indicators, break clauses and penalty measures.
When it comes to the government’s own IT, we’ll encourage bids from smaller suppliers, who are more likely to be UK-based. Current practice leads to lengthy delays and prohibitive cost for bidders. We’ll ensure a level-playing field for open-source software, create a government “skunkworks” to explore cheap and cheerful in-house solutions before going to the market, and create a government apps store to put an end to the constant reinvention of the wheel.
The Manifesto also sets out ambitious plans to utilise technology to improve communications (superfast 100 mbps broadband), travel (high-speed rail) and the environment (electricity with smart grids and smart metering).
This country has an impressive history of game-changing technology innovation and invention – the Conservatives will create the conditions to reinvent that tradition for the 21st century and beyond.
Read the Manifesto in full here.
( 3 comments ) Tags: COINS, government, skunkworks, Technology Manifesto, transparency
Comment by Robert Haines on March 13, 2010 at 6:49 pm
To encourage tech entrepreneurial businesses we need to allow them access to govt project spend. In the US they mandate a proportion of IT budget must be spent with small companies. This supports their growth and development. HMG spend is all on the big IT companies that are the least creative and arguably offer little value for money. If we want new tech entrants to win then the UK govt should be active in supporting them. The current process deliberately excludes small entrants; and then we bemoan the lack of them!
Comment by Adam Saltiel on March 15, 2010 at 1:41 am
I have read the full document, but not the referenced reports.
The big issue is how to reduce the big contractors hold on the budget.
I left my last job because I couldn’t put up with the wastage intrinsic to our activities. IT can be very complex, this is true, but, all too often, the complexity is used as a cover for very expensive, very poor solutions. I am convinced that the real value of what I was working on was between 1/10 – 1/20th of what was being charged, hundreds of thousands, not tens of millions. This is a scandal. A scandal countenanced by HMRC, who are the client! I think it very likely that these savings are there to be made across the spectrum of government IT spend, amounting to billions that could be reclaimed every year.
But, unfortunately, this is where it gets very complex. HMRC had a team of about eight, not all full time to this, overseeing a spend of >£35mil per annum. This is not feasible.
The complexity in this is
1. that Whitehall was stripped down under Thatcher, 2. it is likely to be stripped down again and
3. when this happens talent is lost. (And inproprietary can creep in, I saw some evidence of this, too.)
The first step must be to reinstate a sense of rectitude and public service. But to do that the Civil Service must be backed up, so that they can disengage from the big suppliers by wresting back control of those contracts.
There is much more that must be done in this area, this would be the tone that must be set.
Open source and a skunk works may help, but are not enough in and of themselves.
Openness about contractual arrangements – if that is what is meant – could also help.
I expect there is a list of helpful items.
One key point is that there does not seem to be independent auditing. At the moment as the auditors are just arms of the IT suppliers. That successive governments have allowed this situation to arise is also a disgrace.
Where I was working recently was central to government policy, and I saw two things. That KPIs were redefined, in other words delivery was not made, in fact could not be made because of fundamental shortcomings in execution. That these failures in execution were blamed on all other parties apart from this supplier.
I also learnt, for example, that to change a URL, a simple operation of no more than a days work, would cost £100,000 when requested of a ‘cooperating’ other supplier.
That difficulties and failures I could see in our own system were not to be fixed as that was ‘out of scope’.
And that the shoddy work I was involved with, that used out of date open source software that was actually costing money and resources just to keep in place, actually had no means by which it could be migrated thus entirely militating against any possible benefit.
I go into further detail about these issues and the difficulty in resolving them on my blog.
Comment by Bob Newton-Cross on June 8, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Has there been any further progress on the suggestion that “crowdsourcing” (Jeremy Hunt earlier this year) would draw upon the fund of knowledge and experience out there amongst “the Public”. ?
As a “technical advisor” in DEFRA until I was forcibly retired at 60 (!!) I have some experience of draft legislation and now – plenty of time on my hands !
Regards
Bob Newton-Cross B Vet Med
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