Open government means that useful information about how the island is being run is available to the public. Other than private information that belongs to individuals, which of course should remain private. The States keeps a lot of its working behind closed doors, which discourages public participation, sometimes even between different departments.
There is another way. With a Freedom of Information as law, not just policy, we could start to change attitudes. It would also help to emphasise that States departments work for us, not for themselves. This is how we can get there:
- Bring in a Freedom of Information law immediately
- Commit to embrace the values of the Open Government Declaration
- Implement full disclosure of outside interests and memberships for all senior officials as well as States members
- Make effective use of Web 2.0 technologies in government such as social media, blogs and forums to communicate with public
- Work towards creating a single point of contact for interaction with public
- Change official attitudes, to stop rejecting ideas from outside
- Maintain and strengthen privacy laws: it’s about access to government, not their access to us!