London’s congestion charge might end at 6:30pm but the cameras operate 24 hours a day. I discoverd this fact after making a series of freedom of information requests for the documentary ‘Suspect Nation’, which was broadcast last week on More4.

Transport for London has implemented the 24-hour surveillance without any public discussion or consultation. If the system has any merit, as TfL argues, then it should stand up to public scrutiny. We should have been told that the system was always operational and had a public discussion about whether this was an appropriate and effective way to spend public resources.

TfL’s exact words are:

“The cameras are operational 24 hours a day, except for periods of planned maintenance. However, they are only used for enforcement purposes during the congestion charging period.”

So what are they used for the rest of the time? Find out here.

The Guardian ran a series of articles on the proposed changes to the Freedom of Information Act recently:

• Cabinet Confidential
• Leader: Stepping back into the dark

The importance of our right to know
Guardian, Media, October 30, 2006
By Heather Brooke

Freedom of Information has many uses. One of the most important is that it shows where public services are broken and need fixing. A sensible government would focus on these problems and set about fixing them. A bad government would prevent people from uncovering problems in the first place, ignore problems when they come out, and persecute anyone with the gumption to talk about the problems publicly.

Bad government is ruled by secrecy and that’s what we’ve had in the UK for decades. Decisions made in secret do not lead to good value for money or good public services. A stream of disasters from the BSE crisis and the Marchioness ferry sinking to the Millennium Dome and Child Support Agency all attest to the costs of secrecy both in terms of human life and public money.

All that was meant to change with the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act. Sadly, it didn’t take long for New Labour politicians to renege on their promise to empower the citizen. The act was watered down and passage delayed for fi ve years. Nonetheless, for almost two years we have had a weak right, weakly enforced to ask questions of our public officials.

To a government obsessed with spin, however, any information not “managed” is considered dangerous. And so the Lord Chancellor has announced the results of a consultation into open government that took place in secrecy. Not surprisingly he wants to make it harder for people to ask questions. Of course, politicians can’t come out and say that, so the killer kick to democracy is couched in terms of cost, claiming it’s too expensive to answer FOI requests.

Politicians instead prefer to spend taxpayers’ money on propaganda to convince us that something that is obviously broken works perfectly. The Home Office is a good example. Or the NHS IT programme. Or costings for identity cards. If as much energy was spent solving problems as attempting to spin them away, then these problems probably wouldn’t exist.

It’s worth considering, too, that much of the cost of FOI has come from official foot-dragging and obstruction. For example, the Commons is spending thousands on a legal team to fight against greater transparency of MPs’ expenses. Computer Weekly’s Tony Collins reports that ministers are retaining lawyers to prevent documents being released from the Gateway review on ID cards. The Gateway review was funded with our taxes, and the government is spending more of our taxes to deny us the right to see the results of our largesse.

The ID card review puts the cost of introducing this intrusion into our lives at £5.4bn. Compare that figure, and the colossal amounts wasted by a myriad of bungling, spendthrift projects carried out with little public scrutiny and oversight, and it’s clear that our right to know, in order to expose and criticise this waste, is a small cost worth paying.

Tomorrow will likely see news stories about the continuing rise of people in debt. If you are curious about where these stories come from, the source is raw data published today by the Department for Constitutional Affairs. The quarterly statistcs show the number of companies winding up and bankruptcy petitions. The link above also provides quarterly statistics on mortgage and landlord possession statistics.

In the third quarter of 2006 the following number of petitions were issued:

• 12,923 debtors’ petitions – an increase of 37% on the petitions in the same quarter of 2005.
• 2,877 company winding up petitions – a decrease of 3% on the petitions in the same quarter of 2005;
• 5,099 creditors’ petitions – an increase of 0.2% on the petitions in the same quarter of 2005;

The DCA states that this information is different to the quarterly statistics published by the Insolvency Service, which show the number of company winding-up orders (compulsory liquidations) and bankruptcy orders made by the court, these can be found at http://www.insolvency.gov.uk/otherinformation/statistics/insolv.htm

I will be speaking at the Frontline Club on Tuesday, 21 November at 7.30pm. This Frontline Confidential discussion will see a panel discussing the Government’s proposed changes to the Freedom of Information Act and their effect on citizens and particularly journalists.

Joining me on the panel will be David Leigh, investigations editor of the Guardian and Maurice Frankel, director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information. Hot-off-the-press copies of the new edition of Your Right to Know will be on sale after the event.

Tickets are £5. Please RSVP to events@frontlineclub.com.

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On Tuesday 28th November, I’ll be participating in an Open Knowledge Forum about open ‘civic’ information organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation in association with the UCL faculty of Computer Science (Ian Brown).

“Promoting open information – getting it, using it, sharing it” is the title of the forum and we will focus on open civic information. This is material produced by government or other groups, which helps empower citizens. In particular it includes:

1. The law- in the form of statutes or judicial decisions.
2. Statements of elected representatives at the local and national level (for example the records of parliament in the form of Hansard).
3. Information about the activities of elected representatives and other governmental officials.

The focus will be on projects and software that work to gather and make the data easily accessibly as well as the legal and social issues involved in obtaining and providing such information. The overriding goal is to promote greater public involvement in the democratic system and thus increase the accountability of government to its citizens.

Other speakers are:

• John Sheridan, Head of e-Services at the Office of Public Sector Information
• Julian Todd of http://www.publicwhip.org/ on “Other publicwhip-type projects I’d like to see and why”
• Richard Pope talking about scraping a planning database in Brixton/Lambeth and Love Music Hate Racism’s use of PledgeBank

When: 1845 for 1900 start and

Where: UCL (London), Sir David Davies Lecture Theatre, Roberts Building G08

Attendance is free but please register at:
http://www.okfn.org/okforums/civicinfo2/

In the previous post I disagreed with the stand the Taxpayers’ Alliance has taken on the use of Ordnance Survey data, but I can’t complain about their recent letter to the Guardian in which they support freedom of information as a net taxpayer savings.

Friday November 3, 2006
The Guardian

We reject the government’s argument that freedom of information is a waste of money (Stepping back into the dark, Leaders, October 30). In fact, freedom of information is the cheapest, most efficient way to hold politicians and public services to account. We have used the act to investigate how taxpayer money is spent and lobby for greater efficiency.

Bonfires of taxpayer money have been wasted due to corruption, inefficiency and bad decisions on projects such as the Millennium Dome, the NHS IT programme, the part-privatisation of the tube and railways – projects that were formulated in secret. Unlike the millions spent by government on press officers, regulators and quangos, FOI is a democratic and powerful tool that gives every citizen a right to hold officials to account at virtually no cost, and with the potential for massive savings.
Matthew Elliott
Chief executive, TaxPayers’ Alliance; author, The Bumper Book of Government Waste