Transparency Board Minutes - 6th Sept 2011

TRANSPARENCY BOARD

Minutes of the meeting held on 6 September at the Cabinet Office:

Welcome and Introductions

The MCO Chair welcomed all attendees.

Strategy and Delivery update

Tim Kelsey, Director of Transparency, updated the Board on the following strategy and delivery work: 

PM letter July 2011

• There has been good progress in initiating the departmental commitments.   TK thanked the Transparency Team for their work with departments. 

Sector Boards

• The process to confirm and initiate Sector Boards took longer than first anticipated but, with the exception of one sector which will require a revised plan, the others were supportive of the approach. 
• Some government departments are progressing so swiftly that monitoring their ongoing progress is proving difficult.    

• Other departments, which have made a good start, still need encouragement to ensure that data continues to be released at timely intervals, rather than ‘dry up’

Growth Review

• There has been good progress over the summer. The next steps are to continue to develop proposals with a view to finalising through the Autumn Statement.

Open Data and PDC consultation

• The Open Data consultation document itself was praised as a way to promote engagement, and the Transparency Team were thanked for their efforts.
• There has been a good early response to the consultation, and a wide variety of potential stakeholders will continue to be alerted to the opportunity to contribute. 
• Any other sources of promotion are good, including those within social media forums and internationally.

Action: TK to hold 1:1 sessions with the Board members to establish a coherent strategy and build a forward programme for the next 3 months.

Due: by December

Open Government Partnership conference, New York

• Some members of the Transparency Board will be attending, as will the MCO, representing the Prime Minister.
• Alongside other nation states, the UK would present a country plan for Transparency.
• It would be an opportunity to demonstrate the positive work of the UK as well as keep up the domestic momentum.

Presentation on the UK Location Programme 

Miles Parker, the Defra Deputy Chief Scientific Advisor and Chair of the UK Location Council presented to the Transparency Board on progress in publication of geo-spatial data. 

• The Defra-led UK Location Programme, which is implementing the INSPIRE Directive, has published 858 datasets to data.gov.uk from 28 organisations since May (11% of the total).
• Through INSPIRE the numbers will rise significantly over the next 2-3 years. 
• The Programme is also leading work on linked data approaches using location data; see slide deck attached. 

He also put two suggestions to the Board:

• That the UK Location Council could function as a cross-cutting Board to support the work of the 5 Transparency Sectors:  Criminal Justice; Education & Skills; Health; Transport; and Welfare , so formalising  support to Transparency and open data objectives.
• He would welcome the support of the Transparency Board as the UK Location Council continues to manage INSPIRE’s very tight deadlines for major deliverables in the next 2 and 3 years.

The Board noted and supported these suggestions. 

Environment Agency

Miranda Kavanagh, Director of Evidence, Environment Agency then presented her update to the Board. Her summary of points included:

• The Environment Agency (EA) responds to 44,000 requests for information per annum, more than the rest of the public sector put together.
• They publish all datasets where possible, subject to legal restrictions on privacy and security.  They changed their policy last year in a direct response to the PM’s Transparency commitments, June 2010. 
• Their data provision to customers is a key driver when considering third parties.
• They aim to move to the Transparency Board’s ‘5 Star’ data quality rating, beginning with Bathing Water Quality data.
• Open publication of data is a driver towards changing environmental behaviours and delivering environmental benefits.  The charging policy changed to make data shared with public sector bodies free of charges, subject to third party charges. 
• Much of the Defra and EA data can be described as open data, and they are taking steps to make data even more open, e.g. visualisations on data.gov.uk.
• They are interested in working with the Transparency Board to further utilise the data.
• MK invited the Transparency Board to visit the Environment Agency to more closely review the breadth of data held.   
• EA currently apply a small fee for Intellectual Property. If it was felt that changes were needed, for example for LIDAR, competition laws and third party rights [this was in our original suggested amendments – it’s the relationship between the two that is important] would need to be reviewed. 

In response the Board made the following points:

• The Environment Agency invitation was welcomed.  In addition the Board commented that this was the right time to move the agenda on, e.g. with the provision of water quality data and flood data.   
• The Board commended the EA on the organisation’s data investment and agreed that the EA data could be beneficial to the wider public with very little extra work.
• They noted positively the work of Defra and EA on linked data and the importance of developing skills, and welcomed the offer of UK Location Programme and EA to help promote best practice on linked data.
• The Board encouraged the EA to consider the further opening up of their data, so people ‘can just look at it’. 
• The Board wanted clarification on the rationale and policy for data charging.  They were keen to understand the EA’s position on charging, and how its purpose can be made more clearly valuable. 
• They asked what percentage the INSPIRE datasets on data.gov.uk were open data, and whether this information could be linked up automatically.   It was confirmed this information is not currently held, but will be established shortly.  Most of EA’s datasets will fall under the INSPIRE publication schedule.
• The EA clarified for the Board that the datasets of most interest to the general public include noise maps, flood risk, river cleanliness and bathing water.  The Board were keen to ensure these datasets were utilised more widely, for example, via data.gov.uk.

Action: Transparency Team to follow up with a discussion with EA about the planned business models in relation to charging and open data.

Due: November

Q & A forum on the Open Data Consultation Forum

There was a general discussion and Charles Arthur attended.

The Minister thanked CA for his input. 

AOB

Lord McNally's suggested that MoJ/HO present to the Board on their progress regarding crime and justice data.

The MCO requested that he and the Board are provided with full details on the Netherlands address file re-sell. 

Action: Transparency Team to provide the MCO with a full account of the example of the Netherlands government re-buying their nation’s address file from a private company.

Due: as soon as possible

The date of the next meeting is 11 October 2011, 3.30 – 5.30pm.