MPs' Expenses: They're At It Again

Openness is inherently political, because it dares to assert that we little people have a right to see what the powerful would hide. There's no clearer proof of that point than the MPs' expenses scandal last year. You might think that was a battle where openness prevailed; sadly you would be wrong, as a recent press release from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) reveals.

On Open Enterprise blog.

UK Government Blows it on Lobbying

If you wanted proof that the UK government is still an enemy of transparency, try this:

The Government is grateful to the Public Administration Select Committee for its examination of lobbying in the UK, which is the first Parliamentary inquiry on the subject since 1991.

It is right that the Government remains alert for signs of improper influence over any aspect of our public life and the Committee's Report provides a helpful opportunity to look again at arrangements and to ensure that it has the right framework in place to ensure confidence in the way outside interests interact with government.

In responding to the Committee's recommendations, it is first important to set out the context of this inquiry. While the Committee's Report focuses mainly on the relationship between the lobbying industry and Government, it must be remembered that lobbying goes much wider than this. Lobbying is essentially the activity of those in a democracy making representations to government on issues of concern. The Government is committed to protecting this right from improper use while at the same time seeking to avoid any unnecessary regulation or restriction. As well as being essential to the health of our democracy, its free and proper exercise is an important feature of good government.

What this conveniently glosses over is the difference between "making representations to government on issues of concern" - which is what you and I as citizens do all the time, mostly by sending emails to MPs and ministers - and *lobbying*, which is now an entire industry of people employed to use every trick in the book, from the most to least subtle, to get what their clients want.

The first - making representations - is just what it seems: someone expressing their view and/or asking for action. Lobbying, by contrast, is your typical iceberg, with most of its intent invisible below the surface. That is why a lobbyists' register is needed - so that others can work out the iceberg. The UK government's refusal to countenance this - and the pathetic excuse it offers for doing so - are yet another blot on this administration's record as far as openness is concerned.

And if you're wondering why it is so obstinate, maybe this has something to do with it:

The Government agrees that any system of regulation, whether it is voluntary self-regulation or statutory regulation, requires a register of lobbyists to ensure that lobbying activity is transparent. The Government agrees with most of the elements for such a register outlined by the Committee.

However, the Government does not agree that such a register should include the private interests of Ministers and civil servants. This should not be a matter for a register of lobbyists. Ultimately, major decisions are taken by Ministers. Information about Ministers' relevant private interests is now published as well as information in the Registers of Members' and Peers' Interests. In addition, relevant interests' of departmental board members are also available publicly. However, the Government believes that the proposal for a Register of the private interests of civil servants would be a disproportionate requirement that would place a significant burden on departments and agencies while adding very little to the regulation of lobbying. Both Ministers and civil servants are already subject to clear standards of conduct for dealing with lobbyists.

But hang on a minute: if the argument is that such information is *already* made available, then there would be no *extra* burden in providing it to both authorities. It would only be information not already declared that might require effort - and that is precisely what should be made available. Yet more pathetic - and transparently false - logic from the UK government, which is still trying to keep us from scrutinising the engines of political power.

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Why Open Source, Clouds and Crowds Rule

The Guardian's crowd-sourcing of the initial analysis of hundreds of thousands of PDFs of MPs' expenses is fast becoming mythic. If you want some more technical details, this post is a good place to start. I was particular struck by the following:

As well as the Guardian’s first Django joint, this was its first project with EC2, the Amazon contract-hosting service beloved by startups for its low capital costs.

Willison’s team knew they would get a huge burst of attention followed by a long, fading tail, so it wouldn’t make sense to prepare the Guardian’s own servers for the task. In any case, there wasn’t time.

“The Guardian has lead time of several weeks to get new hardware bought and so forth,” Willison said. “The project was only approved to go ahead less than a week before it launched.”

With EC2, the Guardian could order server time as needed, rapidly scaling it up for the launch date and down again afterward. Thanks to EC2, Willison guessed the Guardian’s full out-of-pocket cost for the whole project will be around £50.

As for the software, it was all open-source, freely available to the Guardian — and to anyone else who might want to imitate them. Willison hopes to organize his work in the next few weeks.

None of this happens without open source to allow zero-cost hacks; nothing happens without clouds, that allow immediate and low-cost scale-up. (Fifty quid? Blimey.) Bottom line: increasingly popular crowdsourcing efforts won't be happening without either.

MPs Plot Against Transparency - and Lose the Plot

They just don't get it, do they?

Parliament is planning to block the future release of expenses receipts after the humiliation endured by MPs this week, The Times has learnt.

Senior MPs have drawn up plans to replace the publication of every receipt with a spreadsheet detailing individual claims.

The changes would make less information available for public scrutiny, despite the anger caused this week by the way in which details were blacked out from the official files.

Look chaps, open means open, as in o-p-e-n: we're not going to settle for less. Get used to it, because we're going to keep coming back and coming back until we get audit trail clarity from our money in your pockets to every last expense.

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Speak up for the Speaker's Principles

In the past, I've frequently asked you write a letter to your MP or MEPs about issues that relate to technical issues around open source, even if only indirectly. Today, I have a slightly different request. It's not about technology, but it is about openness....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Openists of the World, Unite!

As I have observed recently (probably ad nauseam for some readers - apologies, but it needs saying), the openness that lies behind open source, open access and the rest feeds naturally into at least partial solutions for the political malaise affecting many countries, including, notably, the UK.

So it's great to see some of my fellow openists coming to the same conclusions:

I would not normally write about politics on this blog but Non-Brits may not have caught the raw anger of the UK electorate about the betrayal of trust by their elected representatives (members of Parliament). I believe that “web democracy” is now essential for modern government. By web democracy I mean the processes that so many of us have developed in our own work. I am not suggesting that conventional government is replaced by Web processes but that web processes should be used to supplement the process of government and be baked into that process. That is why Net Neutrality matters so much.

Heartening, too, that mainstream media are starting to join the dots, and are realising that the enemies of openness are precisely the ones with something to hide:

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has established that backers of a Bill two years ago which aimed to exempt Parliament from the full force of the Freedom of Information Act have benefited from thousands of pounds paid under the second home expenses system.

Openness, everywhere, now.

"Transparency will Damage Democracy"

Great to see Heather Brooke getting at least *some* recognition for the huge service she has done transparency in this country by fighting for access to details of MPs' expenses, thanks to her fascinating piece in the Guardian today, which lets her tell the real story behind recent events. Do read it if you can: it's an extraordinary tale of dogged refusal to give up in the face of unremitting parliamentary arrogance. Best quotation:

"Transparency will damage democracy."

I just hope she gets at least a juicy book deal out of all this - I'll certainly buy a copy, and will promote it as much as I can. After all, it's the Telegraph that is getting most of the glory for this, when she did 99.9% of the work, which is downright unfair ("Unsung hero" is the all-too apt title of her Guardian feature).

Amazingly, and to her eternal credit, she's remarkably lacking in bitterness about this:

As a campaigner I was thrilled to see the details finally put into the public domain. This is important information that the public have a right to see. But as a journalist, I was livid. I asked myself - what is the point of doing all that work, going to court, setting a legal precedent, dealing in facts, when every part of the government conspires to reward the hacks who do none of these things?

But I don't begrudge the paper. It is getting the story out in the most cost-effective way possible. What's unforgiveable is that the House of Commons repeatedly obstructed legitimate requests and then delayed the expense publication date and that MPs went so far as to try to exempt themselves from their own law. I wonder, too, how much we would have actually seen if we'd waited for the Commons to publish, given that MPs were given a free hand to black out anything that was "personal" or a danger to their "security". These terms have been so overused by MPs that I've no doubt that items such as cleaning the moat would have been removed for "security" reasons, as would the house-flipping scandal, as an invasion of MPs' privacy.

Kudos to all involved.

Heather Brooke: Breaking the MPs' Silence

If any one person deserves credit for bringing openness to MPs' expenses, it is Heather Brooke, who almost single-handedly has fought for their publication. As she points out in her latest post, the MPs haven't given up, or even conceded the principle that we, the electorate, have a right to see what they spend our money on:

Some have asked why I haven’t updated my site to take into account the publication Friday in the Daily Telegraph of MPs’ expenses. Frankly, I’ve just been too busy. I was speaking at a conference for members of the Information Tribunal Friday morning and then doing all the television news rounds that afternoon and evening.

One highlight - debating Stuart Bell of the Members Estimates Committee on Channel 4 news (scroll down to watch). In the Green Room before the show, Bell told me Labour’s latest reactionary plan to hive off the auditing of expenses to a private company ‘like Capita or CapGemini’. These companies apparently picked at random by him. I assumed these were just his initial brainstorming thoughts. But no, apparently this was the government’s latest ruse to stop us, the people, getting a look directly at MPs receipts.

More interesting, perhaps, is the following:

I have a plan which I hope to announce in the coming days. I’m going to set up some mechanism to register the public’s demand for change in Parliament. We need a new system for MPs expenses. One that is simply, transparent and gives the final scrutiny to those people in the best position to provide it - the constituents.

Much more to say, but the demands of work are pressing upon me and unlike MPs I have no taxpayer-funded staff to help me.

Ask, and I'll do my bit - both directly, and in terms of getting the message out to others.

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