The Power of Information: An independent review by Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg

These two changes have created two new groups of citizens

17. The changes described above have facilitated the rise of two new groups of citizens. The first group comprises people who create information on the internet. The second group is composed of people who take information from various sources, including government, and mix it together to make new tools and services. The next two sections look at these two groups.

The first new group comprises people who take part in user-generated websites

18. The diversity of issues and activities covered on user-generated websites is more or less as great as the diversity of the people who use them. Some human needs are very common, though — for example, the experience of raising children — and consequently some very large user-generated websites have grown up around these. Two such sites in the UK are Netmums and Mumsnet (see Box 4).

Box 4: Netmums (www.netmums.com) and Mumsnet (www.mumsnet.com)

Netmums is an online community for mothers and fathers with (or expecting) young children. The site claims 275,000 registered users spread across a 'family of local websites', in which 'each local website is edited and maintained by a local mum with support from a central team'. The founders argue that local content is important because only 'local mothers can truly access and provide the local information essential to life as a mum to young children'. The site provides advice and support for parents about bringing up their children, along with local listings of other services.

The site is similar to Mumsnet, another popular online site providing parenting information, along with reviews of products and services. Mumsnet claims around 10,000 posts and comments on an average day. Janice Turner, a columnist for The Times, wrote recently that she could not 'see how the Government could improve on Mumsnet. Indeed, the fact it is run from one woman's back bedroom in North London makes it infinitely more trustworthy.'

Box 5: Consumer advocacy - extract from a report by the Welsh Consumer Council (forthcoming)

'The nthell:world web forum is one of the earliest examples of an independent effort mobilised by consumers against the actions of a single company. Formed in 2000 by NTL customer Frank Whitestone, it is a consumer lobby community, which set out to provide a public sounding board for customers disgruntled by the company's service. Currently numbering over 25,000 members, nthell:world became an influential force because its focus concentrated, laser-like, on just one service provider (now Virgin Media), offering a space for customers to vent, share and highlight poor-quality provision. In what has become a public relations risk, company representatives who type "[Company Name] sucks" into Google will often find that just such grassroots campaigns have been started against them.

'Although the body of customer experience passing through the nthell:world represented bad publicity in high definition, in recognition of the positive contribution the site's users were making to improving its services, NTL's CEO Simon Duffy met the site's owners in 2005 to discuss integrating nthell:world into the company's own customer service offering — ensuring urgent problems highlighted on the forum were routed into the organisation's existing infrastructure. Founder Whitestone later sold the site to NTL and joined the company as staff.'

19. People become regular users of such websites because the sites contain the sort of things they need to run their own lives: hints, tips, suggestions, moral support, stories, reviews and so on, written and shared with other members of the public. Often advice dispensed in such fora trumps official guidance in terms of popularity simply because it is written in language that means something to users and has the name of a real person attached.

20. Parenting is not the only area where user-generated sites are helping people to help each other. Communities encountered by this review ranged from one with just a few dozen people using email to share and manage the experience of being a student with Asperger's Syndrome to another called TheStudentRoom, which had over 8 million posts, mainly about homework and university applications.

The second new group is people who re-use information to build new tools and services (including government)

21. Another new group of citizens that has emerged out of the rapid technological change in the last half decade consists of information re-users, more colloquially and widely known as 'data mashers'. This group includes businesses, non-profit organisations and normal internet users who want to mix and combine information to generate valuable new forms of information and new services.

22. Some of the most desirable information for this new group is data generated by government, especially geographic information, which can often be used like a glue to bind together disparate information.

23. Certain of these re-users are companies, some of which have grown to considerable size. The internet company uSwitch, founded in 2000, helps people compare utilities providers. It combines private sector information with quantities of public sector information to deliver its services. It was recently bought for over £200 million.

24. At the other end of the scale is mtraffic, a minimalist yet highly useful site for accessing the BBC's traffic reports on a mobile phone, which registers over 10,000 visits a month. It was built as a volunteer project by programmer Tom Dyson, one of the 1,300 members of the BBC's Backstage project. Backstage uses non-commercial data licences to encourage a community of data mashers who exist outside the commercial market.

25. The key challenge demonstrated by these examples is that the value inherent in certain sorts of information is now recognized as changing every day, and, largely speaking, is increasing. It is no longer true that only a big department or large company can generate important benefits using information. The cost-benefit calculations that historically underpinned what information is collected, who can use it, and how it is paid for are rapidly becoming outdated.

Chapter 3: Why these changes matter

• The changing value of public sector information matters to government because there are substantial potential economic and social benefits to citizens from exploiting it.

• Engaging with user-generated sites and data mashers can help government deliver better services, and help citizens to help themselves.

Information produced by the public sector has economic value

26. Public sector information can generate economic value of two broadly different kinds:

• direct value: revenue generated for government by selling access to public sector information; and

• commercial value: revenue generated by companies who make use of public sector information.

27. One of the most easily measured forms of economic value generated by public sector information is the direct revenue earned by parts of the public sector selling information. In 2006, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) estimates revenues from the public sector information market at £590 million per year.

28. Companies pay for public sector information because it helps them make or save money. The Met Office, for example, is aware that 'every year UK companies lose thousands of pounds because of the weather — from late or absent staff, delayed deliveries, surplus or insufficient stock to cancellation of projects'. Consequently, it offers services, built on public sector information, that help businesses make informed decisions that prevent the loss of company money. The taxpayer gets better value for money to the availability of information.

29. Companies that use or re-use public sector information can generate revenue, part of which is later paid to government in the form of corporation tax. Estimating how much is paid in tax, or how much could be, is difficult but important. According to an economic study commissioned by Ordnance Survey, its geographic information underpins an impressive £100 billion of activity in the UK economy. It is easy to see that without good-quality mapping, postcodes or land ownership information, large parts of the economy would be unable to function at all (i.e. anything that required delivery, or sale, rental or purchase of property).

Innovative use of public sector information has social value

30. It can be easy to forget that government releases and uses public sector information to help large numbers of people. This review has identified a range of studies in which the direct benefits of high quality information were measured.

31. In a study involving 200,000 patients, it was shown that, by providing clear and useful information when dispensing medication, pharmacists could improve patient adherence and persistence with medication advice by 16—33%. This both increased the welfare of patients, and saved government downstream costs of further unnecessary treatment.

32. A recent study of the effects of publishing heart surgery mortality rates showed the effect on later mortality rates to be at worst neutral and at best helpful to 26,000 patients studied.

Information created by citizens has economic value

33. Several studies have shown that using the internet increases customer knowledge and collective consumer power, leading to improved quality of goods and services, innovation and often lower prices. Research in 2003 found that use of price-comparison sites yielded an average saving of 16% on electronic goods . Similarly, much of the travel holiday industry has been transformed by the internet, driven by the effect of information on consumer decisions (see Box 6).

Box 6: How the internet has transformed the holiday industry
A Burst Media survey of over 2,000 web users who planned to travel in the next three months found that nearly half (47.2%) of respondents who intended to use the web to plan their upcoming travel said the internet would be their primary travel resource. In 2006, 20.1% of UK survey respondents booked their most recent holiday online, compared to 16.8% in 2005 and 12.4% in 2004. These changes are reducing the need for travel agents and improving the direct information base on which travellers are able to plan. Furthermore, the emergence of new websites allowing traveller feedback on certain travel venues and experiences can place pressure on the providers to improve over time.

Information created by citizens has social value

34. There are few historical precedents for the hundreds of thousands of people who come together out of a shared interest on single websites like Netmums. The precedents that do exist — corporations, friendly societies and trade unions — have all clearly had impacts on, and have raised questions about, the role of government. Despite the huge technological changes over the past 150 years, it is possible to detect the echoes of these earlier social institutions in current development, for example in helping:

• parents to raise healthy, well-educated, socially well-adjusted children;

• shoppers to avoid paying more than the going market rate for goods and services; and

• the sick to recover, or cope with and manage their conditions.

35. Various academic studies have examined whether participation in different sorts of user-generated websites, normally online communities, has any positive impact. Most of the studies that have any measurable outcomes have shown some positive effect of participating in user-generated websites. For example, one study found a positive correlation between the amount of participation on online communities of fellow patients and the psychosocial well-being of women with breast cancer.

36. Similarly, a US Health Department study found that use by HIV patients of their Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System 'not only helps HIV patients keep track of their condition and alert their doctors when they are having problems, but it also has helped lower their average treatment costs by $400 a month'.

37. Furthermore, and contrary to expectations, a study of 2,500 users of a Swedish commercial parenting site found that it was disadvantaged parents who received most support via the website. This support came in the form of finding people they could trust and ask for advice. A remarkable 68% of users in the survey identified themselves as at or below average national income.

38. Of course, the objectives of citizens who operate user-generated websites do not match the objectives of government. Indeed, much of the media coverage of user- generated sites has focused on cases in which user-generated websites display information perceived as harmful or illegal. This review is aware of the potential to use any technology for good or bad purposes. Appendix 4 provides some examples where the creation and distribution of information online can actually be harmful. While this potential for harm does exist, it does not negate the potential for the same technology to be used in ways that promote positive social and economic outcomes.

Chapter 4: The challenges facing government

• There are significant new opportunities for government to capitalise on the new widespread ability to collect, re-use and distribute information.

• Government has not yet fully engaged with the new generation of ordinary citizens wishing to use its information as ingredients in a new range of services.

• Government can contribute indirectly to improve the lives of citizens by doing more to supply its information to the operators of user-generated websites.

• Government needs a new strategy and vision for engaging with citizens and re- users of its information.

Government efforts to respond so far

39. Government is aware that the internet is changing the face of the UK economy and society. Various government agencies are looking into issues around information use and re-use (see Box 7 below) and government has already made a number of policy changes in response to the evolving nature and value of information, including:

• Cross Cutting Review of the Knowledge Economy (2000), which made recommendations regarding information subject to Crown copyright, and encouraged a shift to marginal cost pricing as a default position for the sale of information.

• Transformational Government: Enabled by Technology (2005), which made recommendations to design IT services more around the citizen, and move to a shared services culture.

• Service Transformation (Varney Review) (2006), in which Sir David Varney advised the Chancellor on ways to make the channels through which services are delivered more responsive to users, including improving Directgov and Businesslink so they become the primary information and transactional channels for citizens and businesses.

• Commercial Use of Public Information (2006), in which the Office of Fair Trading made a number of recommendations, including changing accounting practices to ensure that public sector information providers generate as competitive a market as possible in information.

• Electronic Government Services for the 21st Century (2000), in which the Performance and Innovation Unit took a strategic view of which public services should be delivered by electronic means and looked at the options for securing delivery of these services, including the respective roles of the public and private sectors.

Box 7: Parts of government with information policy remits

• The Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) advises on and regulates the operation of public sector information re-use, including the management of Crown copyright.
• The Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information (APPSI) advises ministers on information policy issues that will encourage and create opportunities for greater re-use of public sector information.
• The Ministry of Justice is responsible for the 'digital dialogue', which is examining how central government can strengthen consultation and interaction with citizens using ICT.
• The Department of Transport is responsible for the Science and Innovation Ministerial Committee's Data Grand Challenge on realising the benefits of (particularly real-time) data within and outside government.
• The Better Regulation Executive is looking at information as a regulatory tool, including focus- group work and a series of case studies.
• The Government Communications Group is analysing the government's digital and social media capability.
• The e-Government Unit is responsible more generally for ensuring that IT supports the business transformation of government itself, so that government can provide better, more efficient public services.

40. Despite these positive moves, this review has found that there remains a need to push through reforms to ensure that the full benefits of information creation and re-use outside of government are exploited.

Government has so far interacted little with user-generated websites

41. To date, government has not yet adequately engaged with most user-generated sites or non-professional re-users of its information. Part of the reason for this low level of engagement is likely to be risk aversion in light of the less controlled environment that user-generated websites present. Websites on which anyone is allowed to participate are, by definition, less controlled than sites to which only the operator can contribute. This means that users may use sites in ways that are incompatible with government objectives or ways of operating. For example, civil servants may fear that, by providing relevant information for the users of a site, they might attract criticism toward government or themselves. Similarly, civil servants may be concerned that engaging in less controlled online fora may mean that bad or anti-social behaviour by other users could reflect poorly on government.

42. It is possible that government has not adequately engaged with user-generated sites simply because these new, large-scale user-generated sites have emerged too quickly for government to establish ways of connecting to them. For example, the managers of two different user-generated sites interviewed as part of this review each reported over 20 meetings with parts of government that wanted to engage with them but that simply did not yet have the contracting policy, processes and guidelines in place for collaborative work.

There are barriers to re-using information produced by government

43. Research from the Statistics Commission and the Office of Fair Trading shows that many users of public sector information report barriers to accessing the information that they need in order to add value.

44. Common sorts of barriers include:

• information that is too hard to find;

• information that is in the wrong format, making it hard or impossible to re- use;

• information not being made available when it is needed;

• not knowing that a certain piece of information exists in the first place;

• use of the information being constrained by licensing terms; and

• information that is too expensive.

Box 8: Example of a barrier to re-using public sector information
'I got in touch with the Stern report team, because I wanted to re-publish it in a format that people could easily read and discuss on the internet. I couldn't make the person at the other end of the phone line understand why I didn't want the report in 600 page PDF format. So I said I wanted to be able to read it on my phone. He told me to get a better phone.'

45. These barriers create costs, as well as other problems for both information users and government. The Office of Fair Trading estimates that improved availability of information to re-users could double the direct market value of public sector information to £1.1 billion per year, and has made a detailed series of recommendations to help government do this — recommendations that this review endorses.

46. Much of this improvement is expected to come from better exploitation of public sector information that is already available at marginal cost, but that may not be very widely known or easy to access. Public sector information is often not considered valuable because the public sector body that creates it does not perceive its value and so does not try to make it easily available. Similarly, it is often not considered valuable or exploited because nobody outside government is aware that the valuable information exists.

47. The review also uncovered other reasons for under-exploitation of information:

• unhelpful officials lacking knowledge, which leads to blockages or delays in processing requests because they are seen as low priority and difficult to follow through; and

• confusion about the copyright status of public bodies and their information, and where to apply for a licence; this can delay negotiations.

48. Reiterating the importance of these factors, a research paper commissioned by the Department for Transport has identified a 'silo mentality' in government that can impede better exploitation of public sector information (i.e. the inability to see the benefits of distributing information to others). Genuine concerns include data confidentiality, loss of formal and informal controls over data access, and data integrity. Despite these concerns, this review did also discover instances of good practice, one of which is described in Box 9.

Box 9: The Statute Law Database
The Statute Law Database, created by the Department of Constitutional Affairs (now the Ministry of Justice), is an official and authoritative online database of revised UK primary legislation and is available free of charge to the public. The database can be found at: www.statutelaw.gov.uk aunched in late December 2006, it contributes to the new Ministry of Justice's aims of improving access to justice.
In this case, the government department in charge reached the decision that the social value that accrued from the public being readily able to find out the laws under which they are governed outweighed the possible direct revenue generation from selling access.
Through strong departmental leadership and an innovative approach, which considered the long- term public benefit, the Department of Constitutional Affairs, now the Ministry of Justice, both created a public asset and brought acclaim for the department. It acted responsively to public demand, and the decision was applauded by information and law campaigners. The decision was described as a 'sea-change' in the way government information is made available to the public.

A new vision and strategy

49. This report argues that government needs a new approach to public information of all kinds. If it is to capitalise on the emerging opportunities described above, government needs a clear vision and strategy. This review proposes a simple vision: that citizens, consumers and government can create, re-use and distribute information in ways that add maximum value.

50. The proposed strategy for achieving this vision involves government both addressing the barriers described above and actively taking the opportunities arising from the recent developments in the evolution of the internet. This report recommends a strategy through which government:

• welcomes and engages with users and operators of user-generated sites in pursuit of common social and economic objectives;

• supplies potential re-users with the public sector information they need, when they need it, in a way that maximises the long-term benefits for all citizens; and

• protects the public interest by preparing citizens for a world of plentiful (and sometimes unreliable) information, and helps excluded groups take advantage.

51. Figure 2 below shows how the vision, strategy and specific recommendations of this report relate to one another. Each of the following chapters covers one of the key strategic areas. [CommentonThis.com note: Figure will be added below in the comments]

Chapter 5: Exploring new opportunities

Government should explore emerging opportunities to empower and benefit citizens in partnership with user-generated website operators and users.

To begin this process, government should:

• pilot 'Power of Information' partnerships between major departments and user- generated websites to explore the potential benefits for citizens;

• introduce standard non-commercial licences to encourage more innovation in the re-use of the most valuable sorts of public sector information;

• explore the possibilities for establishing or commissioning a government 'data mashing laboratory'; and

• introduce more self-help fora to improve understanding, effective usage and take- up of government services by users, particularly among the most disadvantaged.

52. The previous chapters suggest that there are various opportunities for better exploiting information to benefit UK citizens. This chapter makes recommendations about experiments to develop an understanding of how government can usefully participate in the new world of information production and distribution.

Government should experiment with 'Power of Information' partnerships with suitable and interested user-generated sites

Recommendation 1

. To improve service delivery and communication with the public, the Central Office of Information (COI), in partnership with the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI), should coordinate the development of experimental partnerships between major departments and user-generated sites in key policy areas, including parenting advice (Department for Education and Skills), services for young people, and healthcare (Department of Health).

53. There are several types of collaboration between government and the operators of major user-generated websites that could potentially be of real value to the users of those sites. These include, but are not limited to:

• gathering feedback on different aspects of service provision;

• consulting citizens on different options for changes in service delivery;

• signposting information and services to specific groups of users who indicate particular needs;

• developing a citizen-friendly language; and

• identifying gaps in service delivery.

54. The idea that there might be mutual benefits is not new. Many user-generated website operators have never had much involvement with government. However, there are some who have tried many times to engage, finding that government departments are unable to respond quickly and flexibly — even if only for experimental partnerships. The Central Office of Information (COI), in partnership with the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI), should coordinate the development of experimental partnerships between major departments and operators of major user-generated websites in key policy areas, including parenting advice (Department for Education and Skills (DfES)), services for young people, and healthcare (Department of Health) to realise the benefits listed in the paragraph above.

55. COI and OPSI should liaise with the relevant departments to form a small project panel, whose task it would be to approach the managers of these web communities to discuss the possibility of collaboration. The exact details of the collaboration should not be predetermined by OPSI, COI or the relevant departments. Departments should carry out detailed discussions with the user-created website operators and identify mutually beneficial options. Government should not prejudge the exact nature of mutual benefits and should approach negotiations with an open mind.

56. In carrying out these discussions, departments should:

• work carefully with the operators and users of pre-existing sites to develop appropriate forms of interaction between government and users, and strongly heed any warnings about engagements that might deter users or harm the sites;

• engage primarily through named civil servants who are open about whom they work for, and who become regular members of communities over a period of time;

• consider how to fund initial engagements — some large sites are run by very small, overstretched organisations, and it should not be assumed that they can afford even to make the time to discuss engagement without some support; and

• evaluate these engagements in realistic time frames (i.e. no less than one year from start).

Government should ensure it does not duplicate the efforts of pre-existing user-generated sites

Recommendation 2

. To reduce unnecessary duplication of pre-existing user-generated sites, COI should update the guidelines for minimum website standards by December 2007; departments should be strongly advised to consult the operators and users of pre-existing user-generated sites before they build their own versions.

57. The corollary of embarking on partnerships with existing successful user- generated sites is that government does not attempt to replicate them and crowd them out of the market. The community of professionals who run user-generated websites in the UK has provided the review team with various examples where parts of the public sector have attempted to replicate their work (see Box 10).

Box 10: Duplication from the perspective of user-generated site operators
,p>Netmums describe a sense of frustration that government departments have tried to 'pigeon-hole' them as potential contractors or promoters of government services, rather than seeing them as partners in providing a better service. Also DfES operates a user-generated parenting site called ParentsCentre which Netmums see as duplicating their service to some extent.

The non-profit organisation Patient Opinion, which seeks to enable patients' sharing of healthcare experiences and to influence health policy, has expressed concern that government may be replicating their service. They report that the first time they heard about the parallel and government-led 'user voice' function was through a published article.

58. This is poor practice, for several reasons:

• Building a community of users on websites is a slow, difficult process with a very high failure rate. Duplicating efforts means investing in a very risky proposition.

• This may be considered to be anti-competitive behaviour, which can make it harder for companies to attract capital, or for non-profit organisations to attract volunteers or funding.

• Government could often achieve its own aims of working with service users more cheaply by working with pre-existing sites.

Recommendation 3

. Departments, monitored by COI, should research the scale and role of user-generated websites in their areas, with a view to either terminating government services that are no longer required, or modifying them to complement citizen-led endeavours.

59. Given the spectacular growth in the number and size of user-generated websites, it seems unlikely that every government information service is now as essential as it once was. In order to reduce future duplication of online services between government and user-generated sites, the review recommends that relevant departments, monitored by COI, should research user-generated websites in their areas, with a view to either terminating government services that are no longer required, or modifying them to complement citizen-led endeavours.

Government should promote innovative re-use of public sector information by granting non-commercial licences

Recommendation 4

. To encourage innovation in the re-use of information by non- commercial users, UK trading funds should, in consultation with OPSI, examine the introduction of non-commercial re-use licences, along the lines of those pioneered by the BBC's Backstage project and Google Maps.

60. The internet has created a new group of information users: people who mix and combine information to create new services of benefit to society. This culture of 'data mashing' has been led by enthusiasts and small businesses, empowered by visionary information-access programmes from internet pioneers like Google and the BBC. In the past, few individuals or small organisations had the technology or skills to access and re-use public sector information. Today, the power of cheap computers and the wide availability of free software makes mixing and mashing information quicker and easier.

Box 11: Data mashing

'Data mashing' is a process of re-using information. It entails merging of different types of data (e.g. mapping and transport data) to produce new products or services. 'Mash-ups' most commonly combine mapping data, such as that provided by Google, with data from another source. For instance, the website Chicagocrime combines mapping data with information from the Chicago police department to create a free, automatically updated map of crime incidents in the city.

In the same way, the innovative American retail website Zillow combines mapping data with information on local land value and house price sales to create a service that accurately estimates the value of a home at a given address.

61. Two things are worth noting about this new group of users. First, by virtue of their status as individuals or organisations wishing only to experiment, not build final products ready for market, they often do not have the resources to pay for expensive data. Second, in the past, larger organisations have found it difficult to engage with small numbers of individual developers. These developers want information delivered rapidly and possibly with no ultimate business use in mind. This difficulty has been exacerbated by the tendency on the part of some public sector information providers to seek licence negotiations, rather than simply sell information from a price list.

62. However, private sector technology companies decided a new approach was needed to engage with these groups of enthusiasts and developers. Seeing these individuals as a potential source of innovation for new products and services, they began to open up their internal information to individuals for free, using non- commercial licences. Examples include Google Code, the Yahoo Developer Network, and Flickr Services.

63. Online retailer Amazon was among the first to spot this opportunity. An article in Business Week describes the early 'epiphany' of founder Je