with Alex Allan, James Crabtree, Tom Loosemore, William Perrin.

I’m a little late but the 1st thing I catch is ‘We don’t have decent systems in place yet’.

The Government has been too slow at democratising the power of information. It is something the government is working to open up and the examples given are, choosing a GP practice or a nursery, things the public would like to see.

‘We need to be more open about information’

‘People need to understand what’s going on’

‘We need to promote innovation – there is enormous power to develop new applications and we have been bad at getting that energy into government. We are still inclined to send out lengthy documents with separate emails with comments rather than developing actual tools that could help this process’. Using word documents with mark up is about as far as it goes!

What about open feedback? We need systems so people can see what other people think about other services. And other departments.

We recognise that the DCSF’s online information about schools is in an unfriendly format for anyone who does not work in the education sector. (Like, parents?!). DirectGov is an improvement; schoolmap.org.uk is pretty good. The government should enable private entrepreneurs to design their own process and utilise these.

The ‘Power of information taskforce’ was partly led by Tom Watson. It spawned a number of initiatives to show better ways of doing things. It produced a number of recommendations, such as encouraging civil servants to take part in online forums and actually identify themselves (they often believe it is wrong to do this). The Facebook page for MI6 is mentioned… perhaps it is stories like this that make them nervous, a little hesitant to ‘get involved’?

Will Perrin talks to us about ‘modern ways of working’. He says that when Obama’s team moved in to the White House they felt like they’d gone back in time when trying to use the IT there. He quotes Tom Watson - essentially our system in the civil service is out of date, takes too long and we need to move with the times. Will’s team used Basecamp in government as a knowledge management system to share information, which he paid or out of his own pocket. He says he’d like to Google other department’s documents so they can share information. He believes Whitehall needs to change… even the buildings themselves are counterproductive.

Tom Loosemore tells us he worked as a civil servant for 28 days. He discovered there was a lot of information lurking around on government websites. Crime data, ambulance service data, but as a citizen, what do you want to know? You want to know about where you live. He co-developed www.upmystreet.com. He says, if they had asked for permission they would still be doing it now! However a lawyer from HMSO called him after he had finished, looking for a way to make it legitimate which created a shift in how to manage copyright.

When developing www.theyworkforyou.com he considered what we want to know about MPs: we care about our own MPs; their background, their main areas of interest. And now – their expenses… If he had asked the clerks for permission in the House of Commons to do this, they would still be waiting.

James Crabtree, journalist talks to us about the political crisis: what does the expenses scandal mean? His editor thought it proved that transparency is disastrous, and they had a row about this, but James believes there are good and bad ways about opening your information to the public. www.mysociety.com is about online democracy and has some celebrated examples of the good it can bring. James has had a long engagement with Parliament and he knows it is a lengthy and difficult process to open up information, particularly as they are used to holding information inside. You can understand their nervousness - but in the long term this scandal will bring more trust.