Better out than in: thoughts and practice on Public Sector Transparency

Over the last couple of years I’ve been working on and writing about public sector transparency. There have been three main reasons for this: the first philosophical; and the second two pragmatic. They are:

> Transparency is a precondition for greater public trust. Without trust, public engagement is difficult/impossible – and yet the challenges we face (austerity, growth in demand etc.) requires us to involve citizens and services users much more intimately in decisions about the future nature and scope of the services we provide to them. The public won’t listen and give their view, if they don't first believe we’ve got their best interests at heart or if we’re not on their side. A perception that we’re hiding something won’t help! 

> information is likely to be leaked in any event; and

> Folk will simply make things up if you decide not to disclose, and usually the truth isn’t half as bad as the reality of what’s not being disclosed

I wrote this for the Guardian last year and it pretty much sums my thoughts. I’ve transcribed below if you have a problem with the link.

When I get a moment I’ll provide some reflections on the experience in Barnet of becoming transparent “by default”. But for now here is a link to LB Barnet’s transparency portal – a major publication of over 60 open format data sets.

Here is also a link to LB Barnet’s Declaration and Commitment Statement to Transparency.

And finally here is also a link to contracts we agreed with Capita a little over a year ago. I’ve yet to find a fuller publication with very little redaction. For what’s worth my view is that - long term – its far more commercially damaging for private sector suppliers not to be transparent about their commercial model, than it is to hide it all away. More on that particular subject another time.

'In Barnet, the default setting is open government'

For council decision makers, public trust is a commodity that is in growing demand but diminishing supply.

In Barnet, we want to buck this trend and build the trust and confidence of our residents as we plan for the next wave of public spending cuts. Our starting point is a default setting of openness.

We recently took the unprecedented decision to publish, with only minimal redaction, more than 2,700 pages of the back-office service contract we signed with Capita in August. Later in October we will do the same for our joint venture, also with Capita, to provide the council's development and regulatory services.

Why are we doing this?

Councils face some deep-rooted and difficult challenges. Demand for services is increasing, including high cost and personal services; customer expectations are rising about how services are accessed, provided and experienced; there is significant and worsening financial pressure; and there has been a major downturn of public trust in political organisations.

All this means people will not accept the necessary pace and magnitude of change to local services unless they first believe their council is working in their best interest. Developing public trust becomes the defining characteristic of a successful public policy response to austerity in its widest sense.

Trust is lost through poor communication or consultation, poor services or a one-off bad customer experience. Just one or all of these can destroy in a single moment the intimacy and respect service users and residents demand. 

The situation is made worse by the kind of hyper-sceptical "you must have something to hide" attitude that is the starting point for most modern public policy discourse.

Many will argue that given recent scandals, such as MPs' expenses or private sector over-charging, that this default disbelief is well placed. But sometimes it can be frustrating. In Barnet, data that we routinely publish, such as risk registers, have been presented back to us as "secret documents" that we have kept "hidden". Hidden? When they have been discussed in public meetings, published in public reports and posted both before and after on our public website? It's hard not to feel frustration, but being defensive is self-defeating. 

So in Barnet we are pushing harder to explore new and fuller ways to be transparent. 

Two years ago, for example, we were processing only about 75% of freedom of information (FOI) requests within 21 days. This year we're achieving 99%.

We are also challenging prevailing presumptions about commercial confidentiality. Some matters are sensitive, but most are not. Often they are very dull, but not disclosing them leads many to assume the worst, prompting a flurry of FOI requests and negative speculation.

This is why we have taken the bold step of publishing the whole of our contract with Capita. We may have been the first, but we are unlikely to be the last local authority to adopt this fresh approach. On 7 October, the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, agreed to publish most contract details of suppliers to the Greater London Authority, following a report by the London Assembly on transparency. 

Some people will take what we are trying to do in Barnet with a pinch of salt. 

We know we need to do much more, not least making our data more meaningful, insightful and specific. But this is just the start of a journey, and no one ever said it would be easy.