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Open Government and how to implement it.

  
 
Grand Panjandrum of the Pointless
15:18 / 06.08.03
This thread follows on from comments on open government in the ‘Credible party of the Right’ thread over in the Headshop.
Recent political events have made it very obvious that the British govt is unnecessarily secretive compared to most other democracies, and that we are in urgent need of legislation enforcing more open government. The question of how we should approach this problem is much more difficult. Open govt, being a fairly vague notion, is an easy thing for politicians to promise before an election and fudge afterwards.
For this and other reasons, developed below, I believe that a general Freedom of Information Act is a bad idea, and in fact counterproductive.
Freedom of information should be dealt with on an issue by issue basis- specific legislation should deal with every relevant area of govt. Having a separate bit of legislation for each issue means that experts on govt. misinformation can focus closely on that issue and that there will be a much better chance of closing loopholes and creating watertight open govt. in the area.
A general Freedom of Information Act would be counterproductive for the following reasons.
1. It would be a very general document, committed to establishing necessarily vague principles of open govt. that could be applied to specific circumstances. Such an Act would give the govt too much wiggle room. Freedom of information is a huge issue and absolutely cannot be dealt with in one Act.
2. The effect would be to shift the argument from the question of whether there should be open government, to the hermeneutics of the term ‘Open government’ as applied to specific issues within the context of the Act. The existence of pre-existing overarching legislation on this would mean that this would become a technocratic issue, predicated on knowledge of the relevant law. The issue would therefore be alienated from the public arena, where it must remain if ‘Open government’ is to mean anything at all.
3. Once one single act of this kind is passed, the govt. can claim that it is an open govt when it is, for all practical purposes, nothing of the kind. It can use this claim to block further legislation, claiming it is superfluous.
4. Given this, passing such an Act would be a waste of limited parliamentary time.


The only benefit of such an act would be to make people more aware of their right of access to govt information. Therefore it should be passed retrospectively after individual bits of legislation have been passed on major areas.
 
 
SMS
04:18 / 07.08.03
The Economist keeps going on about the lack of transparency in the European Union, including a constitution that is apparently unreadable and the usage of terms that cannot be understood by outsiders when other terms are readily available.

I don't know how this problem could be helped. Smaller government, fewer laws, fewer agencies would certainly do something, but this isn't likely to fly well with anyone who doesn't want these things already.

Wasn't there an ancient culture that required that all laws be posted where the public could walk up and read them?
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
07:54 / 08.08.03
Panjandrum - culled from our previous discussion:

I think you're mistaken about a Freedom of Information act being too broad and vague and allowing wiggle room. That's how the UK legal system works - we make general laws and judges and lawyers haggle over applying them specifically. Certainly a general act can't do any harm - and having to fight for each individual piece of information on a case-by-case is beyond the financial resources of most, and certainly too time consuming for almost all. We need to establish the principle: in a democracy, you have to produce a reason to make something secret, not assume everything is secret unless otherwise specified.

And it's vital that we not ignore the 'corporate secret' argument which is becoming a favourite: "I'm sorry, we can't tell you how much this PPP scheme makes for the company which runs it - that's a trade secret" - but that information is vital to determining whether PPP is a valuable tool or a rip-off of the people - check out the Skye Bridge. Or look at Monbiot's 'Captive State'.

Without information, informed choice is impossible. We cannot protest, or even vote, if we have no idea what's being done. Information preceeds everything else, so it has to be established as something which cannot be kept from us without very good reason.

Our government has a habit of secrecy. We need to counter it with an act safeguarding our right to information.
 
 
Grand Panjandrum of the Pointless
20:43 / 10.08.03
I don’t think the debate here is about whether freedom of information and open government is a good thing- I think that this is obviously a good thing and something that everyone posting to this thread (so far) agrees on. What we don’t agree on is how it should work

Concerning Sam’s post above:
I never said that freedom of information should be debated on a ‘case by case’ basis, I said it should be dealt with on an ‘issue by issue’ basis. The idea of people fighting on a case by case basis for particular bits of information is a reductio ad absurdum of my position
Of course it is the case that legal systems seek to apply general principles to specific cases. That is inherent in any non-arbitrary legal system. The question is the level of the principles and how general they are. I tend to believe that it is going to be impossibly difficult to formulate a general set of principles on all FOI issues that is consistent and likely to work. This is because there are some issues that will require different rules e.g. national security. The danger with assuming a homogenous attitude to FOI is that repressive govts can argue that if there is a need for secrecy in one area, there is need for secrecy in all areas- it makes it much easier to justify extreme measures in times of ‘crisis’. Look at America under Bush to see how this argument applies. If people had a clear notion that freedom of information operated differently in different domains of govt then this kind of thing would be harder to get away with.

This does not mean that every diddly issue should have its own freedom of information act, merely that there should be SOME segregation of issues. Exactly how much is very much up for debate.
If we’re talking about the UK there is another point in favour of specific legislation-
If the legislation is tailored to the issue well there should be few problems of interpretation- the law will function well and will deliver clear and quick judgements: Maximum contribution from the legislators, who are elected, and minimum from the judiciary, who are not.

I completely agree with you over PPP- and again think that this should be dealt with specifically. Within a specific framework one can isolate out all the arguments about trade secrets- the framework makes it clear that a PPP scheme is not the same kind of beast as a purely private scheme and therefore existing notions of trade secrecy are not relevant.

Another important point is how we conceive citizen/government obligations concerning freedom of information. What is critical is that we do not conceive of it as a right. A right presupposes denial, and it presupposes that the responsibility of being informed rests with the citizen, which is an unsatisfactory state of affairs.
Instead, it must be conceived of and legislated as a duty of government. It must be incumbent on the government to publish information of their own accord- and if they fail to do this, then they should be punished.

SmatthewStolte’s :Smaller govt and fewer laws are obviously good insofar as they mean that the average citizen can understand precisely how they are being governed without making more effort than they can afford to make.
But even a very simple legal system is going to depend on a huge quantity of documentary evidence that one simply can’t put on public display. The secretiveness of a government is not purely a function of the complexity of its laws, but more one of its policy about making paperwork public. (Though obviously having too much govt makes things a lot worse.)
Another problem with simplicity per se as a principle for lawmaking is that laws must be sufficiently complex to give the ‘right’ verdict in a huge variety of different cases. A legal system that is simple and perspicuous but unjust in even a tiny minority of cases will not be tolerated.
Ultimately there has to be some sort of cost-benefit analysis between a perspicuous system and a just one.
 
 
Fist Fun
08:52 / 11.08.03
I’d definitely agree that complete transparency is absolutely vital in government. It isn’t enough just to make legislation we need have an open decision making process where everyone can see exactly why something came about.

Of the top of my head I wouldn’t really say the UK is a particularly secret democracy. Surely, for instance, the devolution process has brought government closer to people and more transparent. Which, funnily enough, is about having more rather than less government and goes against the smaller is better argument. Surely smaller is more likely to be centralised?

I think technology helps as well. Anyone can have easy access to information at governments sites such as - http://www.ukonline.gov.uk. Do you think we need more information published in this way? If so, what information?
 
 
Grand Panjandrum of the Pointless
18:57 / 11.08.03
Buk- open decision making is clearly very important, but how on earth do we go about guaranteeing that sort of thing? Lots of politics is inevitably done informally by politicians in little discussions in cars or pubs or restaurants. Televising every committee meeting/parliamentary debate and publishing its documents is therefore only half the battle: we can't stop them from talking to each other once they're off air.
The only other solution I can think of is daft but might be amusing, at least for a while: Perhaps we should take a leaf out of Big Brother's book, and insist that all major politicos submit to 24h TV survelliance, so their constituents can be sure that they aren't up to anything. Orwell backwards.

UK not a secretive democracy? Go to google. Look up the CIA website. Then try to look up the MI6 one.
 
 
Fist Fun
15:34 / 12.08.03
Hmmm, I dunno you can watch parliamentary debates live on tv, gobernment documents are published on the web, we have a print media that lives and breathes government scandal and delights in uncovering it.

Do you think Britain is less open than other Europan countries? For instance, Mitterand's mistress and love child were only revealed upon his death. Now that particular facet of his private life may not be relevant to the governace of the country but it shows how something of reasonable interest could be hidden. I couldn't image the same thing happening with a prime minister here...

Anyone got any insight into open politics elsewhere?
 
 
Grand Panjandrum of the Pointless
23:04 / 14.08.03

Concerning Mitterrand's love-child, I think the French are (rightly) much less concerned about that sort of thing- the tradition of the cinq-a-sept and so on. I don't think it says much about the secrecy of a government in itself.
If you're going to use extra-marital affairs as an index of govt secrecy, showing the UK to be more open than France, you should bear in mind that the public only found out about John Major and Edwina after the Tories were kicked out. Shock, horror. Somehow sex scandal is much less shocking when both participants are ugly as sin.
Britain has a much larger tabloid press than any Western country I know of- the Sun, Star, Mirror, Sport, and Mail- 5 titles, all with reasonably high circulations. The press 'lives and breathes government scandal' only insofar as such scandal is reasonably simple and involves famous people and/or sex. The distortion of tabloid journalism are no guarantee of freedom of information- if anything, they're the opposite-very reminiscent of 'Hate Week' in 1984.
The only publication that really does a sterling job of exposing corruption in medium to high places is Private Eye- they go for people more or less regardless of whether they are Westminster or local govt, famous or not. And not many people read PE- it recently had to go from weekly to bi-weekly.
 
  
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