Ministers must do more to justify claimed benefits of greater transparency in public data, says NAO

The Government must develop a better understanding of how greater transparency in public information is delivering increased accountability, improved service delivery and economic growth as ministers have claimed, the National Audit Office has warned.

In its Implementing Transparency report, the spending watchdog acknowledged that the Government had significantly increased the amount and type of public sector information released. Of 25 commitments made by ministers, 23 had been met by the deadline of December 2011.

It also recognised the strength of the strategic case for greater transparency.

But the NAO described the assessment of value for money as “underdeveloped” and called on the Government to better understand the costs, benefits and use arising out of the release of information.

“While the Cabinet Office has identified six types of potential benefits from open data, it is not yet using this framework to evaluate the success and value for money of its various transparency initiatives,” the watchdog said.

The NAO suggested that the new Open Data Institute would have a role to play in improving evidence on the economic and public service benefits of open data. But it warned that the range and scope of the Institute’s work was “not yet clear”.

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said: "Opening up access to public information has the potential to improve accountability and support public service improvement and economic growth.

“What the Government is lacking at the moment is a firm grasp of whether that potential is being realised. If transparency initiatives are to be more than aspirations, then Government needs to measure and monitor both their costs and benefits. This is vital for tracking success and learning what works."

The report meanwhile found that compliance with transparency good practices had so far been mixed. Compliance with some of the public data principles developed by the advisory Public Sector Transparency Board had been strong, it said, but in other areas there had been less progress.

The NAO highlighted how the Cabinet Office had not yet defined how departments should prepare and disclose data inventories to facilitate wider use.

The report also found that levels of public interest in the different types of information released varied.

Releases to have generated significant interest included the police crime map website, which had an estimated 47m visits between February and December 2011.

The Department for Education also saw an 84% increase in the use of its comparative schools data, after the site was made more accessible.

But Whitehall departments told the NAO that there was less interest in standard releases they were required to comply with, such as information on spending over £25,000.

The Department for Communities and Local Government releases details of all spending over £500. Last year the Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, demanded that local authorities do likewise and criticised Nottingham City Council in particular for its failure to comply.

The NAO report claimed that in some sectors, “data that would better inform accountability or choice is either not held or not yet made available”.

The watchdog cited the case of social care, where it argued that neither the Department of Health nor its funded bodies collected appropriate information on comparative costs and performance of providers of home care for adults.

In relation to local government, the watchdog highlighted how the Government had discontinued established performance frameworks. The Local Government Association is in the process of developing a new approach to performance reporting.

The NAO noted the new transparency commitments in the 2011 Autumn Statement, which ministers argued would stimulate additional economic growth. These include releasing data not previously available and opening access to data previously traded.

But the watchdog said: “Its ability to maximise economic growth from traded data is constrained by current arrangements to charge for data, and limited understanding of potential benefits.”

The report also pointed out that there were potential risks from greater transparency. These were:

• Risks to privacy when information is provided at more granular levels;
• Fraud risks with increased transparency around contracts and payment details. “Fraud attempts to a value of £7m directly related to transparency releases have been found in local government, highlighting the need for effective anti-fraud measures”; and
• Other potential unintended consequences. “Given the breadth of information released as part of the transparency agenda, it is likely that wider unintended consequences might result, but the Government has done little to identify or assess the nature and scale of any such effects, either benign or adverse”.

The NAO urged the Government to build on its plans to identify economic and public service benefits of greater transparency, by developing for example a better understanding of the drivers and scale of additional costs of implementing different types of public sector information release.

It also said there should be clearer means of determining demand in order to prioritise the programme of data release, as well as a “structured, objective evaluation of the emerging effect of transparent public data, so that efforts are focused on high-value activities, with unintended consequences mitigated”.

The report added that the Government should:

• Define its operational requirements more clearly. “Areas such as developing data inventories require clear direction so that they lead to benefits for developers and the public”;
• Develop a simple protocol for describing data sources, control procedures and known limitations with releases. “Many data releases have no accompanying statement as to their quality or reliability – running the risk of misleading potential users”;
• Do more to align transparency with choice and accountability. The NAO said the Government should review whether current data for choice and accountability purposes are adequate. It should also, in developing and operating markets for public services, build requirements for greater transparency of financial and performance information in future contractual arrangements;
• Pursue its plans for the development of a research base on the economic and public service benefits of public data, and use that to target the nature and form of data releases;
• Set out governance structures and processes required to manage protection of personal data effectively.

A copy of the report can be downloaded here. 

Philip Hoult