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Information age

Friday 24th October 2008 at 01:59

The Office of Public Sector Information wants government agencies to lead the way in building a 21st century knowledge economy through innovative information-sharing. Director Carol Tullo explains how

What does public sector information mean to you? Enshrined in legislation by the EU’s Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2005, which implemented the EU Directive on Re-use, is the goal of making Europe a competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy.

The directive recognised the enormous value of public sector information (PSI) and the contribution PSI could make to stimulating the development and growth of Europe’s information industry. Understanding the potential of freeing up access, and removing barriers to re-use, lie at the heart of our push to raise awareness of the potential for transforming how the citizen and state interact.

Initiatives in the UK lead the field in Europe, but we are not complacent. The initial economic drivers for the directive are complemented by the UK embracing innovative opportunities that allow government to engage with the citizen. This makes for more efficient government through more effective information-sharing, and creates services tailored for each community with the user at the centre.

The Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI), operating from within the National Archives, is at the heart of information policy in the UK, setting standards, delivering access and encouraging the re-use of PSI. OPSI has responsibility for the management of much of the UK government’s intellectual property; it is also the regulator of the information-trading activities of public sector information holders.

There is renewed focus within government on deciding how we get the best value from our major official providers that trade information. Having recognised the importance of the information market, the government committed in the 2008 Budget report to undertake a review of business models among trading funds (public sector organisations that trade in information, such as Ordnance Survey).

Our vision is taking shape: to lead and transform information management in government. The full spectrum of information management responsibilities now sits within one lead organisation.

This brings together government’s thinking for information exploitation and re-use, while addressing how we make sure that government knows what it controls and manages on our behalf. OPSI aims to make information easy to find, use, share and trade by shaping policy; pioneering new ways of working with PSI; setting standards across information-trading and information management; providing support and guidance; and influencing understanding and culture,

If you Google ‘PSI’, you’ll see how significant the progress of the last three years has been: a welter of documents and discussions have appeared. This commitment from ministers, the cross-departmental exchanges and the creation of the Power of Information Taskforce, have all secured the success of this PSI activity.

The popularity of ‘click-use’ licences, whereby website information is immediately available, demonstrates how much more we can deliver with a relaxation of systems. The Information Fair Trader scheme, now expanding across the wider public sector, sets and assesses standards on how public sector organisations re-use their information.

This year, government launched an online competition aimed at improving how information is communicated to the public, entitled ‘show us a better way’. In parallel, OPSI developed its ‘unlocking service’, designed to gather and assess requests for information from users and solve any problems, real or perceived, to enable them to re-use this information to tailor solutions and services in their communities of interest.

Success has taken many forms, allowing us to experiment with different ways of meeting users’ expectations. The legislative framework we operate has thrown up challenges as we navigate a route to optimal, equitable and sustainable information-sharing across the public sector.

For those who work in the public sector, having the confidence to put a toe in PSI waters requires clarity and certainty. While we take our steer from Europe, we also draw on the experiences of colleagues in other international jurisdictions who face the same challenges.

The UK government’s annual report on PSI was published in July 2008, three years on from the implementation of the PSI regulations, and it detailed achievements so far. The acceleration of activity since 2005 is striking. By making information available and re-usable in flexible ways on the web, new markets and uses can drive innovation. Government at every level is alive to that potential, acknowledging that shared expertise and knowledge is the key to improved and better services.

Are you sure you are making the most of the information that you hold? We are here to help – please ask us.


Extra: Carol Tullo answers Matt O’Toole’s questions at Whitehall & Westminster World's conference on public sector information.

How is OPSI building awareness of the potential of public sector information?
One delegate today asked a question about marketing and awareness – well, that’s exactly what this conference is about. We want to harness and use an interested market across the public sector, that’s going to help us enormously in spreading our message of what’s out there.

What is the potential for generating revenue from public sector information?
Government already trades in its information in all sorts of ways and there’s quite a spotlight on whether we have the business models right. What’s appropriate in 2008-or 2009 is radically different from what was appropriate ten years ago. Technology and the way we access and use information have changed; have the models for trading government information changed as well? That’s one of the questions we’ve been asking today.

How you answer civil servants who worry about PSI requirements meaning extra work without extra resources?
It’s about a culture change. In some respects, we are not actually creating anything different from what civil servants did 20 years – the means and the mechanisms may have changed but if you think about the content, it’s no different. When people are working with information we want them to think, ‘this is something that can be used by others outside my organisation’. Sensible information-management is about knowing what you’re creating, and the natural corollary should then be making the information available to others – you shouldn’t just put it away in a drawer.

So it’s not just about IT?
No, the world has moved on, information technology and information management have been linked and perhaps sometimes confused. But it can be put like this: my bag is the storage capacity – the IT –and what’s in the bag is the content. We’re talking here about using the content well; managing that information effectively.

What about worries over misrepresentation of re-used information?
This raises the whole issue of risk: if we want to be absolutely clear and secure about what information is being used, you put a great big box around it. But what you’ve been hearing today is that, in UK government policy terms, we’ve relaxed the rules to allow civil servants to blog and take part in forums, to allow access to any government information that is on our websites with just a click. I think it really is about creating a culture and climate, so people see these as their shared assets; they don’t have to ask permission.

Should there be a mandatory PSI requirement for the public sector?
I think that would create quite a lot of clarity, but that requirement is not contained in either the legislation here or coming from Europe. Such a requirement shouldn’t be introduced in such a way that the holders of official information might feel less able to experiment and ‘see what happens’.

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