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UK Open Government Action Plan Consultation
The UK Open Government Civil Society Network is collecting ideas from anyone committed to the values of transparency, citizen participation and accountability, for reforms the UK Government should commit to in its 2018-2020 Open Government Action Plan.
Starting: 11 Dec
Ending
0 days left (ends 06 Apr)
What would you do to make government in the UK more open and accountable?
Submit your idea now!
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What is Open Government?
Open government is the simple but powerful idea that governments work better for citizens when they are transparent, participatory and accountable.
Open government reforms can transform the way government and public services work, ensuring that they are properly responsive to citizens, and helping deliver better outcomes for society. Good health and wellbeing, quality education, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, reduced inequalities, sustainable cities and communities - open government is critical to achieving all of these outcomes and more.
What are we doing?
The UK Open Government Network is collecting ideas for reforms the UK Government should commit to in its 2018-2020 Open Government Action Plan from citizens, community groups, civil society organisations, and anyone else committed to the values of transparency, citizen participation and accountability (in other words, you!).
The strongest ideas will have a clear explanation of what is being proposed and why. Please consider structuring your idea according to these three questions:
- What is your idea? - Brief summary of the idea
- Why is it important? - Explanation of what problem the idea would help solve (including any evidence)
- How would it work? - Explanation of how the idea would work in practice
At the end of this crowdsourcing phase, the Open Government Network will prioritise and develop the best ideas into a set of proposals to present to the government and advocate for.
Join the Open Government Network to help prioritise and campaign for the ideas!
Submit your idea!
Further info
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Open Government Network
The UK Open Government Network (OGN) is a coalition of active citizens and civil society organisations committed to making government work better for people through increased transparency, participation and accountability.
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This idea was originally developed by civil society for the 2016-18 Open Government Action Plan, but did not result in a government commitment. It is being resubmitted for consideration for the 2018-2020 action plan.
Each government department and agency should provide a single point of contact for public requests for evidence related to departmental policy.
Status quo or problem/issue to be addressed
Government departments and agencies do not provide a clearly identified contact that the public can request evidence from.
Main Objective
Each government department and agency will provide a single point of contact for public requests for evidence related to the department’s policy.
A nominated individual in each department and agency will have responsibility for the contact point. At a minimum this will be a dedicated email address prominently advertised online and in communications.
This individual will monitor public requests for evidence; identify and collect appropriate information; respond to public requests promptly; and keep a public record of public requests received including the progress of ongoing requests.
Relevance
A single point of contact and an ongoing invitation for people to use it will increase civic participation. People sending a request to government for evidence underlying public policy, and getting an answer, is beneficial to public understanding. It will increase the public’s access to information. It will mean the public will be less prone to misunderstanding on issues such as vaccination, agricultural policies and screening programmes.
Institutionalising responding to public requests will be a sign that government accepts its accountability to people, as in the 1980s companies accepted accountability to consumers by introducing dedicated phone lines and addresses for customer services and as public bodies accept their responsibility to properly look after public data by providing a point of contact for enquiries under the Data Protection Act 1998 for example.services, and when public bodies accepted their responsibility to properly look after public data by providing a point of contact for enquiries under the Data Protection Act 1998 for example.
Ambition
A single point of contact for requests for evidence used to shape public policies answers the government’s commitment to empower and transform the relationship between citizens and governments, as set out in the UK National Action Plan 2013 – 2015. It also answers the government’s commitment to public engagement in policy making.
An open and ongoing invitation to people to ask the Government for its evidence will make government more open and will improve the relationship between citizens and the government. Obfuscation and delays in implementing easy ways for the public to engage in policy making until now has put departments in a bad light. An open invitation and a direct, clear route for citizen’s questions will address this.
An institutionalised single point of contact will reduce time delays. There will be no need for people to engage the Freedom of Information Act request process. A dedicated individual in place will reduce the passing around of public enquiries within and between departments to try to find someone to answer that frustrates people now. This will save government time and money too and enable government to provide other relevant resources and information that helps people to focus and refine future requests.
Category:
Access to information
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This idea was originally developed by civil society for the 2016-18 Open Government Action Plan, but did not result in a government commitment. It is being resubmitted for consideration for the 2018-2020 action plan.
Ensure the open and timely publication of government research, through a standardised public register of all commissioned studies.
Status quo or problem/issue to be addressed
The public cannot easily see whether research conducted or commissioned by government has been published.
Main Objective
Every government department and arms-length public body should publish a standardised record of all research it carries out, whether conducted by civil servants or commissioned through independent academic experts. The record would include what the research is looking at, who is conducting the study, and any agreements around the publication of results.
Relevance
Government conducts a large amount of research, either directly through the civil service and arms-length public bodies, or through independent academic experts it commissions. There have been high-profile examples where such research was delayed, modified, and misrepresented – or dropped altogether – apparently because the results were politically inconvenient. Recent examples include research looking at the rising use of food banks, international comparisons of drugs policy, and the effect of immigration on the jobs market, but researchers have come forward with numerous cases under previous governments.
This non-publication happens even though there are numerous codes of practice and guidelines in place requiring the prompt release of all government social research. Where this happens it undermines public scrutiny of government policy. Because government points to research to justify policy, there should be a presumption of open publication so that citizens can look at what they’re being asked to accord authority to. And if taxpayers pay for research, they’re entitled to know the results and what the quality of the study was. The impression that challenging results will be delayed or suppressed risks damaging the trust between government and researchers.
Currently it is not possible to assess the scale or significance of the non-publication of government research, as departments aren’t required to hold or publish records of what research is being carried out, by whom, and any agreements around publication of results. Such a record would make it easier to hold government to account, allowing public scrutiny of cases where studies are delayed or suppressed.
Ambition
A standardised record of all government research would empower the public to scrutinise what research is being carried out, by whom, and what the results were. This transparency would make government more open, and help improve the trust between researchers and policymakers by making it harder for studies to be delayed or suppressed for political reasons.
Category:
Access to information
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This idea was originally developed by civil society for the 2016-18 Open Government Action Plan, but did not result in a government commitment. It is being resubmitted for consideration for the 2018-2020 action plan.
As it also relates closely to newer ideas on open contracting (ideas 31 and 33), these will be considered all together.
Increase the opportunities for citizens to be involved in planning, tender and oversight processes
Status quo or problem/issue to be addressed
Open Contracting principles call for citizens to be engaged in all stages of the contracting process, including design, planning and review.
Yet, there are few structured opportunities in the UK for citizens to participate: either in the planning for procurement, or in assessing whether goods and services delivered were of a high enough quality.
Main Objective
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Increase the opportunities for citizens to be involved in planning, tender and oversight processes - at both national and local level;
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Pilot digital tools that support citizens to engage in the planning, delivery and evaluation stages of contracting;
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Ensure there is a preferential option for those living in poverty and marginalised groups, so that public expenditure stimulates skills and entrepreneurship amongst these groups.
This may include creating visualisation and user-input tools that help citizens to discover aspects of the contracting pipeline relevant to them, and to provide their input and feedback on proposals, including those that will work for people who live in poverty and marginalised groups. Right now, the Contracts Finder platform is oriented solely towards suppliers: yet citizens often have key expertise on identifying precisely what the demands are in each local context as it changes over time, how to get the best value for money, and deliver the best services, for a planned procurement. Developing interfaces that can alert citizens to planned contracts affecting their local area, or their subject areas of interest, and then tools that help solicit input from citizens, could offer an important way to crowdsource insights and experiences.
Similarly, at the implementation stage of contracting, citizens have a key role to play in oversight. Creating visualisations that can indicate contract performance (drawing on information provided as part of the common baseline in Commitment 2) and that invite feedback from the beneficiaries of contracts, opens up a further space to ensure contracted out public services are delivering effectively.
Relevance
Participation is a central theme of Open Government, and contracting is a central way in which public services are now delivered.
Increasing openness, including transparency and participation, in contracting ensures greater accountability for public funds, and opens up opportunities for greater citizen control over those services.
Better oversight of contracting information allows government to understand its supply chain better, driving more efficient procurement and use of public resources, and reducing government exposure to supply chain risks.
Ambition
The UK has a leading role to play in connecting the disclosure and participation aspects of Open Contracting. Public procurement and contracting are a vital strand in the Prime Minister’s golden thread of conditions that enable countries to be successful the world over. It’s the biggest part of government spending and it’s the most at risk of corruption.
Government, the private sector, and civil society, will all have more information to engage effectively with public procurement.
Citizens will guide procurement processes to produce better outcomes. Civil society monitoring, for example, is transformational for service delivery, helping to halve the costs of textbooks in the Philippines and infrastructure such as roads, clinics and schools in various OGP countries.
Category:
Open contracting
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This idea was originally developed by civil society for the 2016-18 Open Government Action Plan, but did not result in a government commitment. It is being resubmitted for consideration for the 2018-2020 action plan.
Ensure all UK tax incentives/reliefs are annually costed and subject to periodic review to ensure they serve their purpose and provide value for money.
Status quo or problem/issue to be addressed
Currently the UK undertakes a cost benefit analysis of tax incentives and reliefs prior to adoption, but does not systematically undertake continuous monitoring once passed into law.
This is a problem as there is general agreement among economists that tax incentives have the potential to be harmful, and as such should be treated with caution and subject to close monitoring, yet this is not happening. This is a global problem, in developing countries it is estimated that harmful tax incentives are costing developing countries around $130bn a year (Action Aid). There are also various EU inquiries into harmful tax competition currently being undertaken.
In the UK the Public Accounts Committee found that HMRC is deficient in its reporting of tax reliefs, of tracking performance against stated objectives, and also including the cost of tax reliefs into policy spending (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmpubacc/892/892.pdf). This commitment is consistent with the recommendations in the PAC report, as well as recommendations made by the OECD, UN, IMF and WB to the 2011 G20 (see http://www.oecd.org/ctp/48993634.pdf pg 23-24). Some other countries are more advanced than the UK in this regard - e.g. India does seek to attach an annual costing of reliefs to its budget http://www.indiabudget.nic.in/ub2015-16/statrevfor/annex12.pdf)
Main Objective
To extend the existing transparency of UK tax incentives and reliefs to enable greater monitoring and periodic assessment, ensuring parliamentary and public awareness and trust in the UK regime, and ensure value for money.
UK leadership in this area would also ensure the UK meets the recommendation of the UN/IMF/OECD and WB to the G20 in 2011 for G20 countries to show leadership in transparency and accountability of tax incentives, to drive the spread of best practice globally, especially to developing countries.
Relevance
This commitment would provide access to new information on how how the UK’s tax incentives and reliefs operate, information that is necessary to understand the impact and utility of the measures that have been implemented, and to assess the likelihood of success of new measures. Thus public accountability would be increased by providing the tools and information to hold the government accountable. It will also help increase understanding of how the UK tax system works, and so enable greater civic participation in discussions on the development of the UK tax system.
So long as the methodology used is shared and made open it should provide opportunities for greater use of technology and innovation in improving the monitoring and assessment of tax incentives globally.
Ambition
This improved transparency would ensure the government is both more open, through the provision of more information, and improved as tax incentives and reliefs would have to be regularly assessed and justified, ensuring that poor incentives are removed from legislation.
Category:
Open budgeting
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This idea was originally developed by civil society for the 2016-18 Open Government Action Plan, but did not result in a government commitment. It is being resubmitted for consideration for the 2018-2020 action plan.
Increase transparency, public participation and accountability in the budget process at all levels domestically and internationally.
Status quo or problem/issue to be addressed
Greater transparency and increased active public participation in the budget process at all levels to ensure more accountable, responsive governance and effective use of public funds in the UK and abroad. The UK government should be a leading performer on the Open Budget Survey.
Transformation and innovation in developing reformed public services is essential in the current fiscal climate, but we know that formal politics and our traditional democratic processes struggle to attract participation and engagement from the wider demographic of the UK. This proposal suggests a ‘test and learn’ approach to designing greater participation in the influencing stages of budget setting and spending, and opening up budgets to greater transparency and public participation.
Main Objective
There are two objectives for this commitment:
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To increase transparency, public participation and accountability in the budget process at all levels by promoting the implementation of the GIFT High-Level Principles domestically and internationally and improving fiscal performance as per the transparency, participation and oversight indicators of the Open Budget Survey. Steps include increasing comprehensive of budget documents, legislative public hearings during the budget cycle where citizens can testify and provision of feedback by the executive and supreme audit institution on how public inputs are taken into account.
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To implement the principles of participatory budgeting into a process that empowers the public to spend a percentage (0.25-1%) of public funds. A Citizen’s Jury will design the process and make recommendations in response to their question: What would it take to devolve 0.25- 1% of a public budget to a citizen participation process? Our objective would be to apply those recommendations in a ‘test and learn’ environment.
Relevance
On 28th March 2015 The United Nations passed a resolution that stated it is the "...responsibility of States to ensure that relevant national laws and policies are translated into transparent, participatory and accountable budgets and spending" The resolution follows UN Resolution 67/218 endorsing the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency High-Level Principles and calls upon States to make budgeting processes open, transparent, accessible and participatory.
The UK is in a strong position to deliver on this commitment domestically and internationally as per the transparency, participation and oversight indicators and practices of the Open Budget Survey and GIFT High-Level Principles. There is extensive evidence of how national and local governments have delivered on greater transparency, public participation and accountability in the budget process at all levels in a mainstreamed manner.
The UK should draw on tried and tested use of Participatory Budgeting in policing, health, local government and voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations, and extending that practice into the mainstream budgeting process of both national and local budgeting. This commitment has civic participation at its core and applies best practice principles of PB to ensure that civic participation becomes a strong and meaningful feature of open government when influencing public spending decisions.
The commitment can be measured by using the Open Budget Survey. The Open Budget Survey 2015, released on 9th September, provides specific recommendations for the UK and 101 other countries. Recommendations for the UK include increasing the comprehensiveness of the Executive Budget’s Proposal and Enacted Budget; establishing credible, effective participation mechanisms such as public hearings, surveys and focus groups during the budget process; holding legislative hearings on the budgets of ministries, departments and agencies; providing feedback on how public inputs have been used.
Ambition
By adopting a ‘test and learn’ approach to greater participation in budgeting processes, the learning from this commitment will inform how the UK could extend and develop their approach to mainstreaming citizen participation in public spending.
By developing and scaling up existing practices, the government can deliver greater assurances to the UK taxpayer that their funds are well spent, and greater dividends to governments and recipients of UK aid.
Implementation of the GIFT High Level Principles, the Participatory Budgeting principles, the learning from over 300 participatory budgeting processes in the UK, and the practices outlined in the Open Budget Survey can improve governance, trust and services that respond to citizens’ needs.
Category:
Open budgeting
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This idea was originally developed by civil society for the 2016-18 Open Government Action Plan, but did not result in a government commitment. It is being resubmitted for consideration for the 2018-2020 action plan.
Explore and practice open policy-making and share learning
Status quo or problem/issue to be addressed
Policy makers need to develop and trial a range of different approaches to open policy making and citizen engagement to understand what works best and when.
As citizen engagement is a continuously developing field, with new evidence of benefits and limitations of different techniques in different settings emerging on an ongoing basis, continued exploration needs to take place to understand the tools and opportunities available for national and local governments to hear from a wider range of citizens.
Following this up with evaluation and sharing this learning across Whitehall, local governments, and devolved regions can ensure the maximum benefit for this work, and enable greater uptake and understanding of open policy making across the UK.
Main Objective
The UK Government will explore opportunities for open policy making by trialling 10 different open-policy and participation projects for capturing citizen involvement and feedback into policy formation in different departments, focussing on different stages of policy development, such as at the very early stages of policy formation on a particular issue, during a formal consultation, and following publication of a draft Bill. This builds upon commitments made in the UK’s 2nd Open Government Partnership (OGP) National Action Plan to open up policy-making:
"The UK government will demonstrate the potential of open policy making by running at least five ‘test and demonstrate projects’ across different policy areas. These will inform how open policy making can be deployed across the civil service”
Consideration must be given to geographic diversity, and engagement with diverse audiences, and one of these pilot projects should include a participation project specifically focussed on engaging and ensuring the genuine participation of children.
These trials should be co-created in discussion with civil society organisations and built with an expectation of informing participants how their views have been heard, other competing insights, actions taken as a result (even if there is little), with feedback provided in language that participants can understand.
Subsequent to the completion of the 10 projects, a report should be created to share learning across Whitehall, comparing the different methodologies, value given, lessons learned, and how Government can learn from (and embed these ideas where appropriate) in future policy making. This evaluative report should also include recording the number of individuals engaged, the mechanisms by which they were engaged and how feedback was provided to those who engaged.
To better share learning outside of just Whitehall, and to raise the awareness of open policy making among local governments, devolved regions, and citizens, other dissemination activities should also take place - including 4 events taking place across the UK focussed specifically at engaging local government and devolved regions. Other dissemination activities could include blog posts or creation of a video.
Regular progress updates (every 6 months) of the progress made on this commitment should be provided to Parliament
Relevance
Open policy making is one means of civic participation. Citizen engagement, as part of that process, is a continuously developing field, with new evidence of benefits and limitations of different techniques in different settings emerging on an ongoing basis. There is no single “correct” model that should be adopted in any given scenario, but instead a range of possible approaches, the design of which can be tweaked to result in different outcomes.
It is therefore important that governments and civil society continue to explore the efficacy of different approaches to citizen engagement in different scenarios, but do so in an agile way that enables continued development of approaches, and encourages the sharing of best practice across both Whitehall and local government.
Ambition
This is an expansion upon a previous OGP commitment to open policy making with an increased number of projects, but also with very specific focus upon increasing inclusion, developing feedback mechanisms, and ensuring involvement at a variety of stages of policy formation.
There are also built in requirements to share learning across Whitehall and into local governments and devolved regions, helping to disseminate knowledge of open policy making and best practice among policy-makers and civil servants across the country.
Category:
Citizen participation
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This idea was originally developed by civil society for the 2016-18 Open Government Action Plan, but did not result in a government commitment. It is being resubmitted for consideration for the 2018-2020 action plan.
Develop process and tools for more effective consultation practices.
Status quo or problem/issue to be addressed
The principle that those affected by decisions should be given the opportunity to shape those decisions is central to open government. Outside periodically voting for elected representatives, citizens (in the broadest sense of term to mean all inhabitants of a country or local region) must be offered opportunities to provide their input into key policy decisions that affect them.
Consultation provides not only an opportunity to gather opinion and values, but also an opportunity to tap into the expertise of the public; crowdsourcing insights that government would not otherwise have access to. However, this process is often experienced, both by government and by citizens, as a tick-box exercise: more concerned with compliance than with conversation and dialogue.
Consultation principles and requirements on government to consult have been progressively weakened, with recommended and mandatory timelines removed. Many national and local government agencies have lost specialist staff capacity to deal with consultation, and early experiments by government with the use of social media for greater consultation and dialogue have not been followed up systematically. Furthermore, many consultations taking place in ways that limit the effective ability of citizens to engage, and too frequently the process of consultation is not transparent, and those who do respond are often left with little understanding about how their ideas have been considered and heard, or why their views may not be taken on board.
Research into civic engagement shows repeatedly that the consultation process itself is damaged and the public becomes apathetic if the time they invest in consultation is perceived to be wasted. If policy-makers do not respond to the findings of consultation, credibility, engagement and trust are severely impaired. Ministers, as elected representatives of members of the public, have ultimate authority in policy-making; their role in ensuring that consultation is carried out at the right time, heard, and responded to is paramount.
With Government self-monitoring consultation performance, there is little transparency about consultation performance, and little ability for citizens to raise concerns that decision making has not been sufficiently informed by the public voice.
Main Objectives
Government should work to create a stronger culture of responsive, accessible, and transparent consultation.
Building on the template of the Government Service Design Manual, which offers accessible guidance for civil servants in agile management of digital services, government should develop a Consultation Design Manual and toolkit, remixing existing resources to provide improved support for officials carrying out consultations, and should also include guidance on how findings of consultations should be processed to Ministers for consideration.
Work needs to be done to better understand what an effective response to consultation should look like and to develop the processes to enact this. While it is understood that government has to act on all most or even any of the findings of a consultation. However, those who have given their time and ideas in a consultation have the right to know that these ideas were considered, how. Furthermore, where popular or majority ideas were not incorporated into a policy, a response should explain the reasons for this.
Greater transparency should be provided about consultations, with a regular review published with information on consultations listed on GOV.UK, including details of their opening dates, duration, number of responses (alongside some data about demographics of respondents), and the number of days taken for a government response to be published.
Public sector consultation standards should not be monitored by government itself, and instead an external organisation, such at the National Audit Office, should be given responsibility for public sector consultation standards, and for ensuring compliance, with a clear complaints route to an Ombudsman. Introduce a system by which further checks and balances such as proper scrutiny of published summaries of data, feedback communications and submissions to decision-makers are added.
Civil society also has a responsibility here: to provide greater oversight of consultation as a whole, evaluating government progress, and providing constructive critical feedback on areas to improve.
Relevance
The right for citizens to participate in the decisions that affect their lives is a central element of open government and one of the key eligibility criteria for the OGP. Effective consultation processes that allow citizens to participate fully, including being heard, and the tools to enable civil servants to do this, are crucial.
This commitment seeks to develop better consultation process and tools, and to create opportunities to re-establish trust in the process of policy-making informed by consultation, requiring policy-makers to communicate their response in a way that demonstrates genuine consideration of public voices, and developing a process by which Government are not self-monitoring their own processes.
Transparent evidence, in the form of a published response to each consultation that details how the government have used the information from the public strengthens openness and accountability: how public voices have influenced policy and explaining where they have not strengthens accountability and openness.
An external body, in the form of the National Audit Office, should have responsibility for public sector consultation standards and ensuring compliance, with a clear complaints route provided. This would mark an end to unenforced standards, fewer judicial reviews, result in a greater confidence in consultative processes, as well as increasing government accountability.
Ambition
In an increasingly complex world, citizens’ input is a critical resource for policy-making, as good decision-making requires the knowledge, experiences, views and values of the public.
The process of consultation is typically opaque, with little built in requirement for engagement of a wide range of individuals. Institutionalising a minimum level of citizen engagement in the policy process is important for ensuring that the views of citizens and other stakeholders are present when decisions are made, and that decisions are better informed as a result.
With a lack of transparency about how decisions are reached from the input curated through consultation, too frequently citizens are left feeling disengaged and lacking in trust in the decisions. Creating a requirement for government to respond about how public voices have or have not been taken on board in the decision making process creates feedback loops and prevents this breakdown in trust.
Finally, there is need for greater accountability. Government should not self-monitor their own consultation standards, and instead this should be provided.
An external body, in the form of the National Audit Office, should have responsibility for public sector consultation standards and ensuring compliance, with a clear complaints route provided. This would mark an end to unenforced standards, fewer judicial reviews, result in a greater confidence in consultative processes, as well as increasing government accountability.
Category:
Citizen participation
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This idea was originally developed by civil society for the 2016-18 Open Government Action Plan, but did not result in a government commitment. It is being resubmitted for consideration for the 2018-2020 action plan.
HMG should reform the statutory register of lobbyists so that it provides meaningful information about the scale and nature of lobbying in the UK.
Status quo or problem/issue to be addressed
Lobbying is a healthy part of democracy and can lead to better decisions and more effective policies. However, it can be done in a way that distorts the democratic process. In turn, this can adversely affect citizens’ trust in their representatives and the government.
According to Transparency International’s latest Global Corruption Barometer (2013), 59 per cent of respondents believed that the UK government is ‘entirely’ or ‘to a large extent’ run by a few big entities acting in their own best interests; 67 per cent thought that political parties in the UK are ‘corrupt’ or ‘extremely corrupt’; and 55 per cent thought that the UK parliament is ‘corrupt’ or ‘extremely corrupt’.
Despite recent reforms, there is still very little transparency about the scale and nature of lobbying activities in the UK and little disincentive to prevent corrupting behaviour by lobbyists. The statutory register only covers a fraction of those engaged in lobbying activities, it provides no information on the activities of lobbyists, or the amount of money being spent to promote certain policies or views and it only covers those engaging with senior government figures, such as Ministers and Permanent Secretaries - it does not cover influencing aimed at mid-level civil servants, or parliamentarians.
In its White Paper on lobbying, the government claimed that there was no need to widen the scope of the statutory register because details of interactions between government and in-house lobbyists was already made available through data containing information on meetings between Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and Special Advisers and external organisations. However, this data has significant issues which means that it does not compensate for a comprehensive statutory register of lobbyists. Its issues include:
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Scope: they only cover meetings between lobbyists and senior government figures, when a lot of influencing work is aimed at mid-level civil servants and parliamentarians. They also do not provide information about how much is being spent by lobbyists on their influencing activities.
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Accessibility: the latest versions of this data cover April to June 2014 and only half of departments publish it as machine-readable open data.
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Meaningfulness: there is insufficient information in most of the data to give members of the public an idea of what was discussed in the meetings.
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Accuracy: questions have been raised about how complete these records are. For example, there have been a number of incidents where Ministers have not reported meetings with lobbyists.
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Intelligibility: the lack of structure in the data means it is hard for the public to easily analyse how many people are trying to influence government and who they are.
Main Objective
To expand the scope and requirements of the statutory register of lobbyists to provide greater transparency about who is trying to influence public policy and decisions within the current Parliament. The new register should include:
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in-house as well as consultant lobbyists
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lobbyists who are trying to influence UK Government Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Special Advisers, mid-level Civil Servants and UK Parliamentarians
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details of their registered address and company recognition number (if applicable)
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quarterly updates detailing their activities during that period, including:
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an honest and reasonable assessment of how much they spent on lobbying activities
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details of any staff they had seconded to a government department
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details of who lobbyists are trying to influence i.e. which government department of official
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details of the names of lobbyists who have lobbied on their behalf of within the previous quarter
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details of any public office held previously (during the past five years) by any employees who are engaged in lobbying
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details of what they are trying to influence i.e. the policy, legislation, contract, licence etc.
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Relevance
Providing transparency about who is trying to influence public policy and decisions would make our democratic system more open and accountable to citizens.
Ambition
Providing more information about who is trying to influence public policy and decision-making would increase the openness of our political system. In turn this would help citizens hold their representatives and public officials to account for the decisions they make.
Category:
Anti-corruption
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