Open data: three changes to be welcomed

The Government today announced plans to increase access to the vast amounts of data it produces, in an effort to improve trust in official figures and scrutiny of public services.

A Cabinet Office White Paper on the subject set out a number of measures to achieve this aim, from a five-star ranking system for Government datasets to making available figures which were previously the preserve of civil servants.

The White Paper addresses a number of problems that have hampered Full Fact's endeavours in the past.

For example, on several occassions when claims have been based upon Freedom of Information (FoI) responses, the format the data was available in made it awkward to conduct useful analysis on. The White Paper points to new legislation that means:

"The new section means that, where the Freedom of Information Act requires release of a dataset, a public authoirty will now have a responsibility to release the dataset in a form that can be used and re-used by specifying the licence it can be used under and, where reasonably practicable, in a re-usable format.

This will help to ensure that anyone interested in checking the evidence behind FoI claims has the ability to do so, and the Government needs to ensure that this data is presented in an easily-accessible manner.

However the good news for armchair auditors doesn't end there. Full Fact has also spotted two other news stories today that could help the public keep tabs on decisions taken in Westminster.

Over at the Law Gazette, Joshua Rozenberg reports that the National Archives are preparing to significantly revamp legislation.gov.uk - the website through which the public can access the laws made in Parliament.

As Mr Rozenberg notes, currently the site is often out-of-date or incomplete, and again this has caused Full Fact problems in the past. For example, last year when looking at the legal footing of the data collected in the Census we were ourselves wrong-footed by the site's failure to track a recent amendment to the relevant statute.

Any improvement to the website should be warmly received by factcheckers everywhere, and we look forward to seeing how the changes will work in practice.

Last but not least our eye was also caught by an Office for Budget Responsibility press release issued this morning that announced that a database of changes made to taxes since 1970 has been thrown open to the public.

For anyone interested in recent controversies about the proposed rise in fuel duty or the actual increase in VAT, the information contained in this spreadsheet is sure to prove valuable.