This morning, Liberal Democrat supporters and others unfortunate enough to have made it onto Nick Clegg’s mailing list received an e-mail from the Deputy Prime Minister announcing the Your Freedom website. Which is great, although a good 24 hours late.
But later in the e-mail, he says:
This is the open government we have long campaigned for.
Really? Your Freedom is all you’ve campaigned for? Because that’s a long way from my definition of an ‘open government’. Your Freedom is a tiny, tiny step on the road to what I, and half the rest of the internet, think that term means.
Where’s the guarantee that the government will take any notice of what’s posted on Your Freedom? I want to see a promise that any serious item that gets a thousand comments gets debated in the House.
Where’s the full publication of each and every bill that passes through Parliament, and the wiki for us to carve it up and debate it? Where’s the declarations of who’s had lunch with MPs during the drafting process of these bills? Where’s my searchable database of members’ interests, and the API so we can run stats on it? Where’s the abolition of all meetings ‘behind closed doors’ and the publication of annotated, searchable transcripts?
Where’s the downloadable CSV files of every expense for every MP? Where are the declarations of every use of the party Whips? Why can’t I see the Treasury’s spreadsheets?
Why doesn’t the government run its own website showcasing each and every result of a Freedom of Information request? Why do FoI requests exist at all? A truly open government would publish by default and redact information only when necessary.
If it’s too hard and too expensive to set all this stuff up, just set up an FTP server and dump everything in it — Word docs, database dumps, whatever you’ve got. There are enough journalists and bored web surfers out there that we’ll eventually make sense of it all for you.
We’ll help, Mr Clegg — there’s enough of us out here that want to see a real open government. But if that’s not what you had in mind, please stop pretending that the token gesture of Your Freedom is all that’s required to dub yourselves ‘open’.
I agree with Ian.
"I want to see a promise that any serious item that gets a thousand comments gets debated in the House." – How does one define serious? To me, funding thousands of pounds to create a spray painted urinal is a total waste, to a conceptual art fan it is culturally essential
Well, they've got guidelines and a moderation policy already. Perhaps anything that survives that and meets with strong support should be debated.
By serious I meant things that the government would actually talk about, rather than silly ones – I've already seen one for "Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics", and as soon as 4chan gets hold of it, all hell will break loose!
They'd probably do well to moderate them before publishing them on the site. Would decrease the amount of junk on the site.Have you considered posting the content of this note to the site itself?
Moderation is a double-edged sword though – it slows down the cause-to-effect of people posting. Not being able to see the results of your effort straight away is often a killer of user participation in a new site."Your Freedom" is pretty focussed on repealing existing laws, so I'm not sure my rant about openness really has a place there at the moment. :(
I'd stick it in the 'restoring civil liberties' section rather than the 'repealing unnecessary laws'. Given the amount of random nonsense on the site, it won't be too out of place :oP
Heh, that last comment could be read to be much more derogatory than I meant it :oP What I meant to say is that it fits vaguely into the 'civil liberties' category and it's not like anyone else is restraining themselves in what they post. :o)
It's alright, I didn't take it as derogatory! :DMight put it up, it'll take some rearranging of my post into a non-rant though!