Changes we would like made to increase the transparency of public bodies in the UK

Changes we would like made to Freedom of Information law

main page: Changes we would like made to FOI law

Publish a complete list of public bodies

"In 2003, the parliamentary Select Committee on Public Administration criticised the Government’s inadequate approach to mapping Britain’s public bodies. ...Five years on, the Government has yet to address this problem. Among the Committee’s priority recommendations was for a list to be published annually, registering each public body, its costs and its responsibilities, accompanied by a clear explanation of the bewildering variety of organisations which fall under the term “public body” (often referred to as “quangos”)."

Tax Payers' Alliance http://tpa.typepad.com/bettergovernment/files/080515_structure_of_government_1_unseen_government_immediate_release.pdf

It would be best if this was done in the form of a directory, with full contact details for each body.

Make every public body publish an email address

Make every public body publish an email address. Companies providing services through websites already have to do this.[1]

It would appear difficult to argue that public bodies should be held to a lower standard of accountability/accessibility.

Publicly owned companies should be accountable to the public

I would give the public the right to attend Board Meetings of public companies, except those parts of the agenda where there was a good reason to go into closed session. I would require each directors vote to be minuted on all formal decisions. Draft minutes of open meetings should be automatically published online within 15 working days of the day on which the meeting finishes, final minutes should be automatically published online within 15 working days of the minutes being approved.

Free Our Bills

We would like Bills, and bill-related data, to be published in a structured machine-readable way, as soon as is possible after the data has been generated. See also: Free Our Bills

Lobbying transparency

We would support the establishment of a mandatory register of lobbying activity that was independently managed and enforced.