A plea for more government data online

What do these three things have in common?

- The Power of Information by Tom Steinberg and Ed Mayo
- Report No.40 of the Statistics Commission
- Andrew Gilligan's shortlisting for 'Reporter of the Year' by the British Press Awards

All three argue that releasing public information in a regular, consistent, independent way - preferably via the web - would be a very good thing for democracy.

They're right. It's just that many within government, and the majority of journalists, don't seem convinced of it yet.

'The Power of Information', published last summer and last week endorsed by Minister Tom Watson, advised the government to supply "innovators that are re-using government-held information with the information they need, when they need it, in a way that maximises the long-term benefits for all citizens". i.e. like MySociety already does with www.theyworkforyou.com and www.fixmystreet.com.

Report No.40 by the Statistics Commission describes, in surprisingly elegant prose, why it is closing its doors at the end of this month having spent the last 8 years trying to work out how to increase public trust in government statistics by monitoring and regulating their release. The report notes a number of major successes, not least the 2007 Statistics and Registration Service Act, and ends on an optimistic note.

And Andrew Gilligan, having been shortlisted for his reports into Ken Livingstone's spending as Mayor of London, has been at pains to stress the importance of publicly available information on the web to his investigation. "One of the striking things about this story", he told Ian Burrell of the Independent, "was that it actually was in relatively plain view. The payments to these companies are a matter of public record, if you know where to look and you want to sit there with your calculator and add it all up."

Yet, as Gilligan notes, "It's one of the great indictments of journalism that so few people..." do the necessary legwork. Despite it being, in Gilligan's words "not that hard". "Quite a lot of stories don't come from brown envelopes and people in car parks, they come from quite boring places that are available for anyone to see if they wanted to".

Neither do government ministers escape criticism. The Statistics Commission cannot shut up shop without a "parting shot over political misuse of data" (as reported in today's FT). The Commission, in the FT's words "savages the Department for Children, Schools and Families for its practice of failing to provide 'clear and separate publication' of statistics before issuing Ministerial statements of them". It also lays into the Department for Work and Pensions and the Home Office.

So we appear to be moving in the right direction, only with glacial slowness. As much as we need bodies like the new UK Statistics Authority we also need a major cultural change - amongst both politicians and the media.

Perhaps, if Tom Watson proves particularly persuasive, and a growing number of journalists win prizes for investigations based on evidence gathered online, then the quantity and quality of publicly available data will start to grow. And, as a consequence, so will investigations of public bodies by journalists and citizen journalists.

Perhaps. But don't hold your breath.