How do you define ‘official’?
A fortnight ago, MPs caught a fleeting glimpse of a process that has, to this point, taken place discreetly: the Information Commissioner’s Office investigation into the office of Michael Gove over...
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The social mobility challenge for school reformers
This graph tells you lots about what is wrong with English state schools: To create it, we gave every 16-year-old who took GCSEs at a state school in 2010 a point score for their exam performance: 8...
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Birthdays and school grades
One perennially startling fact about education is the importance of birthdays: the oldest children in a class of four-year-olds not only outperform their peers in the early years, when a few months of...
View ArticleParliament refuses to reveal cost of Lords reform
The House of Lords authorities are refusing to hand over officials’ estimates of how much it will cost taxpayers to replace the chamber with a mostly elected senate, prompting anger from Tory...
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How to spot successful schools
There has been a curious outbreak of maths in education policy discussion this week. This all started a fortnight ago when Kevan Collins, chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, put...
View ArticleMPs stress need for better open data
The coalition’s drive to open access to official data was welcome, but more needed to be done to make information comprehensible, according to a report by the House of Commons’ public accounts...
View ArticleGovernment spending transparency: can’t see the wood for the trees
The government has made admirable moves towards openness and transparency in recent years, with one landmark step being to publish all payments by government departments of £500 or more. Communities...
View ArticleTurning data into money: the Open Data Institute launches
By Kate Allen and Jonathan Moules A new institution which aims to maximise the UK’s world-leading position in the emerging field of data use for the creation of new businesses and services is set to...
View ArticleGetting around the official statistics
Last week, I went to Wolverhampton where I spoke at a local debate, organised by the university and Pat McFadden, the local MP, about the local authority’s school. I was the warm-up act for Lord...
View ArticleLondon has 73 fires each day – and 161 false alarms
The London Fire Brigade has published its incident data for the past four years in the London Data Store, the capital’s open data repository. The data, originally obtained by the Financial Times under...
View ArticleMost transparent government ever?
The Freedom of Information Act has a clause which allows public authorities to ignore a request for information “if the request is vexatious”. It says little about what members of the public can do if...
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How well is the Information Commissioner doing?
A few weeks ago, the Financial Times leader column – the voice of the newspaper – issued a fairly damning verdict on the Information Commissioner’s Office about its weak enforcement of the Freedom of...
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The data trust deficit
Trust in institutions to use data is much lower than trust in them in general, according to a new survey for the Royal Statistical Society. The poll of just over two thousand British adults carried out...
View ArticleOpen data and government contracts
In total around $9.5 trillion is estimated to be spent by governments on contracts with various businesses and other organisations worldwide. That’s a lot of money — about 14 per cent of the world’s...
View ArticleGovernment spending data: Some cleaning required
The release this morning of data detailing every Whitehall payment above £25,000 is a step towards the culture of public transparency that the previous Government intended to create when it passed the...
View ArticleHow do you define ‘official’?
A fortnight ago, MPs caught a fleeting glimpse of a process that has, to this point, taken place discreetly: the Information Commissioner’s Office investigation into the office of Michael Gove over...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The social mobility challenge for school reformers
This graph tells you lots about what is wrong with English state schools: To create it, we gave every 16-year-old who took GCSEs at a state school in 2010 a point score for their exam performance: 8...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Birthdays and school grades
One perennially startling fact about education is the importance of birthdays: the oldest children in a class of four-year-olds not only outperform their peers in the early years, when a few months of...
View ArticleParliament refuses to reveal cost of Lords reform
The House of Lords authorities are refusing to hand over officials’ estimates of how much it will cost taxpayers to replace the chamber with a mostly elected senate, prompting anger from Tory...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Open data in Burkina Faso
This is a guest post by Liz Carolan, International Development Manager at the Open Data Institute Literally translated Burkina Faso means “land of the upright people”. It has long been one of West...
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