'A warning to Mr. Cameron: information alone doesn’t solve a problem' blog discussion

Mobeer

Some constructive criticism would be:

The current web site is a pain. For example, "Who does what in whitehall" is all PDFs, not exactly easy to search, especially if the user does not know the correct department.

The section on "business plans" doesn't lend itself to being manipulated except for one item at a time by hand

Some business plan items seem clear cut, for example "1.3.i.d. Place at extended readiness a landing and command ship" probably means one fewer such ship (HMS Ocean?) will be in service.

But for "1.3.ii.e. Rationalise wider equipment holdings in the light of experience on operations and improved fleet management", how will progress be indicated, especially given an End date of Apr 2020?

trf197

Thanks for the reply, Martin. I'm not sure there is a simple solution to this problem. Government is complicated and by nature complicated things are not transparent. Trying to simplify and explain will get you somewhere but how many times would a conclusion from the simplification be to go back to the original data and see for yourself. I think there is also an enormous trust issue. Since we don't really trust governemnt, 'independent' bodies or the media there will always be claims of intentional bias and obfuscation.

It seems parallel to the freedom of information act. although no-one knows all of the information that is potentially out there, there is now an understanding that this information will come out and that acts as a restraint on behaviour. Journalists can make their career by finding the real stories hidden in this data. I don't belive that everything will be examined in great detail but the fact that any part of it could be is significant. Also, is the motivation of the journalist to hold the government to account is greater than the auditor?

I'm sorry that because you have been greatly successful in one area of lobbying that you are called on by anyone and everyone to lobby on their behalf. You have done an excellent job through this site and model very well a high view of personal responsibility, citizenship and political involvement. People should not be asking you to sort things out for them - -they need to hear that you are just like them and that they should be taking it up themselves. The tools you use (on the whole) are the tools available to most of us, except that you have used them longer and successfully and therefore have achieved a certain position.

(You should be grateful we are not in the US were names can be added to some ballots by any voter - I think you would have found yourself elected more than once by now. Sheriff/Judge/Mayor Lewis?)

pawnbroker_2

The fundamental problem is that Cameron and most if not all MP's will not accept that there is a massive disconnect between them and us and that their view of our world is ludicrous.

Any of us caught either fighting in our place of work or fiddling expenses would have been down the road long ago.

I give you an example.


Before the election we were all told that £1 in every four of Government expenditure was borrowed.

After the election but before the CSR I questioned a payment by DFID to the world bank after getting no where with my MP. My MP incidentally denied any of this money would be borrowed !

The payment I was querying was £820,000,000 due to be made in 2011, so according my calculations we (UK) would have to borrow £205,000,000 of this money to give it away.

Under an FOI request the DFID told me it didn't know how much of that money was financed by borrowing and I got the impression it didn't care either.

Further in their answer it told me that the information regarding it's payment in 2011 was wrong and it was really 2010.

I have since written to my MP again after the nonsense over Child Benefit when as I pointed out he and his colleagues are waving through obscene amounts of money without any thought yet are causing all sorts of angst over a very similar amount of money.(I don't get this benefit)

Cameron is as bad telling us daily we are up the creek but just gave the EU another £400,000,000 per year.

As my MP is showing they hear but they don't listen.

thepearce

I'd say there's a lot of data.....rather than information.

pawnbroker_2

I think you are right.

The data on tuition fees for example is that they will £9,000 a year to English students.

Based on what Cameron said in China the information is that fees to English students will rise so that fees to Chinese/foreign students won't go up so much.

If that is half true then I am really surprised that English parents are not joining students in demonstrating.

As I said previously the massive disconnect between MP's ,parliament and us is growing daily.

bobprice101

Providing the general public with an infinitesimal amount of information is a fabulously open way of camouflaging serious issues.

Any researcher will appreciate the necessity of wading through tons of information in order to find a golden nugget. What David Cameron and Nick Clegg are doing is transparently obvious, they are simply offloading the responsibility of government to monitor itself and any body that can hurt the public.

Does the public have time or inclination to wade through tons of information in order to find that golden nugget? It seems reasonable to suggest that they don't have the time or inclination and for one very good reason. They elect a government to manage this work for them via a civil service.

If we are now being told that because of this fabulous government transparency all responsibility will be laid at the feet of the public for not bringing a 'golden nugget' to the attention of the government when things go wrong, why are we, the public, employing a civil service?

GillM

I used to work for a local authority in a team of highly paid staff whose sole objective was to provide thousands of statistics to the Department of Health every year. A lot of the data required was meaningless unless you knew the full background, and many of the so-called performance indicators bore little relation to the actual quality of services provided. These data were regularly published so that Joe Public could see how his money was being spent. However, even we didn't always understand the data requested from us, the Department of Health certainly didn't, judging by the 'guidance' they provided us with, so how Joe Public was supposed to learn anything from the published figures was always a mystery to me.

Mankysteve

I would strongly suspect what Martin is asking not to happen is exactly what the government wants to happen. Try and please voters but saying here's all this information, but in reality there would only be a few individual capable of understanding it.