Information & Ethics committee  Perhaps I would talk about this very briefly and then I'd hand over to John again, as he can tell you from inside of government. I think the importance of a prime minister or a president endorsing freedom of information can't really be overstated. Prime Minister Tony Blair was very tepid on FOI, and he was then followed by Gordon Brown, who made a number of public speeches in favour of it, followed by David Cameron, who has made public statements and speeches in favour of freedom of information.

Information & Ethics committee  I think resistance is extraordinarily hard to measure. It does go on at whatever level, but I think it's very much in the minority of cases. The problem is that a requester may see a delay as resistance, whereas the official will see it as the fact that unfortunately the response to the request has been delayed.

Information & Ethics committee  I think it's extraordinarily difficult, because trust is influenced by so many other things. We found for central government there was no change in trust. We found for the ongoing study of local government—and it's not yet complete—that there was a very different perspective. We suspect this is because local government can do things central government can't do, such as be visible in the community or make a difference to what's happening virtually on people's doorsteps.

Information & Ethics committee  I think, as with FOI, it will make government more transparent and accountable. I think it does reduce some of the problems caused by old-style FOI, such as the resource costs. Again, I'd agree with John here that some of the really interesting things we'll start to see will be when websites are developed and new applications are developed that allow people to do new things with the information.

Information & Ethics committee  I'd refer back to what John said earlier. The coalition government is less than a year old. It started rolling out what you'd call, I suppose, version 2.0 of freedom of information, which is about online publication. All local authorities in Britain have to publish online all of their spending over £500, as of the end of January 2011, and all but eight of the local authorities have done that.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, that's more about the supporters groups. There's obviously quite a long-established pro-transparency community in the U.K., headed by people like the Campaign for Freedom of Information and other groups like that. Also, there's an advocates group for open data. Just to specify, I was referring to the fact that Helen Darbishire points out that actually the advocacy groups themselves are starting to merge more closely.

Information & Ethics committee  There isn't much evidence that I know of. There is some analysis by economists of the potential for what sorts of economic benefits open data can generate, and this is by Professor Pollock, who is also one of the leading supporters of open data policy. All I know from the U.K. is rather anecdotal.

Information & Ethics committee  I think what Helen Darbishire has done--and I heartily recommend her report--is point out that ten years ago the transparency community and the open data community were two very different bodies, but increasingly they're coming to work together. You can see this in the U.S. and the U.K.

Information & Ethics committee  No, I'm afraid I'm not either.

Information & Ethics committee  This is Mr. Worthy. I'm afraid I can't hear the translation again.

Information & Ethics committee  This is Mr. Worthy. I could perhaps just say a few things. Is this okay? Can everybody hear me? Can you hear me?

Information & Ethics committee  With regard to that question, there are of course obstacles to freedom of information, and one of the obstacles is something that hits every regime, which is to what extent the bureaucracy and the political class endorse FOI or attempt to resist it. This again comes down to the issue of leadership.

Information & Ethics committee  Those are two of the hopes for freedom of information: that it would improve the quality of decision-making within government, and make government more trusted. So if I take each of those in turn, we found it hadn't had much impact on the quality of government decision-making, but part of this was the difficulty that so many things had influenced the quality of government decision-making, particularly in the last ten years, that freedom of information could only be a very small part of any change that had taken place.

Information & Ethics committee  Is that for me or John, or both of us?

Information & Ethics committee  John really hinted at that when he was speaking. Lots of things are coming together. The open data movement and the FOI movement are coming together. As I see it, the coalition government is firstly committed to kind of joining up ideas of proactive publication, with use of the Internet and online publication of information to obtain a range of political and economic benefits.