Will we see a Tripadvisor for councils?

摘要

Next month sees the deadline for all councils in England to upload online their spending details over ￡500. Will this create the much-vaunted army of armchair auditors or will the public respond to this new wealth of data with supreme indifference? Will we see the growth of a Tripadvisor for councils? And what of the role of private-sector analysts of this data? As with most initiatives in local government, there is no 'one size fits all' and the so-called transparency agenda is no different. A fortnight ago 100 councils had already met the deadline. But the way they present them is varied with a quarter in the form of a basic PDF, some updated each month and many categorised in quite different formats. These in turn reflect the commitment of the respective councils to the principles behind the onward use of their data.