11 February 2022

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Warning: Graphic Content

8 min readFeb 11, 2022

Major intervention

Aspiring prime ministers are often much more vocal about open government than actual prime ministers, for obvious reasons. But what of former ones?

John Major speaks at the Institute for Government. Image by Sam Macrory, https://twitter.com/sammacrory/status/1491729838767755268

John Major’s speech about democracy to the Institute for Government could have been written by a campaigning civil society organisation, covering standards, ‘candour’, and this government’s various efforts to ride roughshod over parliament and protest. You can watch the whole thing here, read it here, and read an edited version here.

Boris Johnson clings on. Obviously.

As for other bits and pieces:

There was a mini-reshuffle this week, following the surprise appointment of Steve Barclay — as minister for the Cabinet Office, the man ultimately responsible for government use of data (and showing some promise on the topic) — as the Prime Minister’s new chief of staff, as well as remaining a Cabinet minister. Profile here. (And just saying…) James Cleverly was also handed a new role, which is as good an excuse as any to remind everyone of his speech to an IfG fringe event at Tory party conference. (There was a nice metaphor about caring about effective government, regardless of whether it was a burger government or pizza government, in there somewhere…)
Government appears to be recruiting a chief digital officer. Which it said it would a long time ago, before its preferred candidate decided not to leave their existing post so they created the Central Digital and Data Office (which he chairs) instead. What does that mean for the current executive director of CDDO, though?
I fear the ‘minister for misinformation’ may have misinterpreted his job title. Again.
And on the subject of Online Harms, what about the Opposition? My take, fwiw: the ‘criticising the government for not doing the thing they said they would and calling for something (that feels populist) to be strengthened’ is classic ‘we don’t actually have a policy or distinct approach yet’ tactical politics. It hasn’t changed much since I was working for Labour back in 2012–13. I’m not sure how much longer that can last.
‘Ultimately this is what Cummings gets wrong. Regulation, institutional norms, information transparency, processes, are more important than brilliant people.’
My last foreign trip before the pandemic was a brilliant week in Buenos Aires talking about open data and open government. I remember the surprised looks I got every time I complained about the quality of UK government data, especially historical data. Argentinians couldn’t believe that we would have such problems, since we had the wonderful National Archives — a luxury they did not enjoy, given their political past, and of which they were very envious. I was reminded of that reading this.
Congratulations to mySociety chief exec, Mark, who’s moving on after a sterling stint. It’s been a pleasure working with him (and remains a pleasure working with mySociety).
A reminder that you can catch up on February’s Data Bites on the IfG website — and the next event will be happening on 2 March. We have a great line-up in prospect — details will appear here shortly.
Some more details on the Alan Turing Institute’s AI UK conference, at which I’ll be appearing, have been published here.

And last, but certainly not least, a couple of IfG-related requests…

First, my colleague Paul and I are about to kick off a new project looking at the lessons from government data sharing during the pandemic. We’re looking for particular projects for case studies, things to read, and your views on what worked and what didn’t. Please drop Paul and me an email (or @ him and me
on Twitter) if you have any thoughts.
And second, my colleagues are seeking feedback on Performance Tracker, the big IfG/CIPFA project charting the performance of public services (they’re also responsible for the excellent Week in Public Services). They’re currently seeking feedback on how people are using Performance Tracker and how it could be improved — you can fill out the survey here.

Have a great weekend
Gavin