PLC Public Sector reports:
In last week’s post, we set out the government’s proposals to open up details of local government spending, and highlighted some unanswered questions about how these proposals will be implemented.
We called on the Secretary of State for Communties and Local Government, Eric Pickles, to act quickly to answer these questions, and this week he has responded by publishing initial details of how the proposals will be implemented.
In a letter sent to local authorities on 4 June 2010, Mr Pickles states that:
- Initial guidelines about how to publish payments over £500 will be produced by developers and published online at www.data.gov.uk for comment and debate.
- Guidelines on how to publish contracts and invitations to tender (ITTs) over £500 will follow.
- Draft codes of practice on payments over £500 and contracts/ITTs over £500 will be published for formal consultation in September 2010.
- Final codes of practice will be published in November 2010, so that authorities can publish details by January 2011.
It is extremely positive that a clear pathway has been set out, as leaving individual authorities to address these themselves would undoubtedly lead to inconsistencies, which would, to an extent, defeat the prime objective.
That is why it is a little worrying that Mr Pickles has also stated that:
“By September councils will be expected to make details of spending … that fall above £500 … available for the public to see and scrutinise.”
If the government is (rightly) going to take the steps necessary to make sure this initiative is implemented correctly, what is the point of requiring local authorities to implement it before those steps have been taken?
Local authorities should also be warned that publishing this information will only be one aspect of the government’s push for transparency. The press release published by Mr Pickles promises that further work will take place on:
- Identifying the types of information and data that will need to be published in the future.
- Standardising information and data (it may have been useful to consider this prior to introducing the requirement to publish procurement and spending information).
- The types of body that will need to publish information and data.
- Simplifying the way in which data is accessed.
The icing on the cake will see this work crystallised in a “right to government data” bill.
The main upside promised for local government from this transparency drive (beyond working in a more open, accountable environment) is that top down assessment and inspection will be reduced (for example see the scrapping of comprehensive area assessments).