Billions of pounds' worth of government contracts with outsourcing firms could be opened up to greater public scrutiny, as the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) gets set to adopt a new global contracting standard.
According to the most recent figures from the National Audit Office public spending watchdog, the UK government now spends around £225bn a year with private and voluntary sector providers.
But a 2014 report by the Public Accounts Committee – published in the wake of revelations that the Ministry of Justice had been overcharged for the tagging of offenders by two private sector suppliers – highlighted ongoing concerns about scrutiny, and called for "far greater visibility" on the performance of key government deals.
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The Cabinet Office has now vowed to roll out the Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) across Whitehall's central procurement body, the Crown Commercial Service, by October this year.
The data standard was drawn up by the Washington-based Open Contracting Partership, and, according to its creators, is designed to allow the sharing of structured information "on all stages of a contracting process", including from "planning to implementation".
Documentation on the standard is freely available online, and the OCP says organisations making use of it should publish in an open, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format and be prepared to "publish early", "iterate" and improve disclosure "step-by-step".
The Cabinet Office's new "Open Government National Action Plan" says the switch to the OCDS, announced earlier this month at a global anti-corruption summit, will "ensure citizens can see a clear public record of how government money is spent on public contracts and with what results".
It added: "The challenges of working with current published data are a barrier to suppliers and businesses in deciding whether to bid for public sector business, and means third parties are less able to hold government to account for the way public money is spent."
By adopting the OCDS, the Cabinet Office says the UK could "help to bring about a bold shift in the global default of public contracting and procurement from closed to open", and says the move will both improve public scrutiny as well as create more opportunities for small and medium sized businesses to win deals.
"Too much government data is still held in organisational silos, which are costly and inefficient to maintain" – Cabinet Office
The government has vowed to work with non-governmental organisations and campaign groups including ARTICLE 19, the Campaign for Freedom of Information, and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations as it rolls out the standard.
Meanwhile, the government has also committed to taking a more proactive approach to publishing open data, acknowledging that while the UK's data.gov.uk portal has published some 27,000 datasets since it was launched in 2010, information "can still be difficult to find and use".
The Cabinet Office document says: "Too much government data is still held in organisational silos, which are costly and inefficient to maintain. The data we currently make available openly does not always meet users’ needs in terms of format, quality and timeliness.
"At the same time, data publishing processes across government do not fit a standard model. They are not always automated or embedded in ‘business as usual’, which can mean there is sometimes duplication and overlap in the data government holds."
Better open data architecture could, the Cabinet Office says, "benefit digital services and improve operational and policy decision-making".
The Government Digital Service (GDS) – Whitehall's central team designed to sharpen the state's online offering – has therefore been asked to standardise datasets and report on the potential effects that any privatisations or contracting-out of government services could have on the UK's national data infrastructure.
Earlier this year, chancellor George Osborne promised to spend £5m to build a new open address register of all 29m UK postal addresses and 1.8m postcodes, after the government lost control of the existing Postcode Address File (PAF) system following the privatisation of the Royal Mail in 2013.
Since the sale, public sector organisations have had to apply to use the PAF system under a licence agreed by Royal Mail, the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) & the Scottish Government. The latest plan says GDS will lead work on creating the new open register of UK address data.
"Hampered by weak information systems"
Giving a cautious welcome to the Cabinet Office's new commitments, the UK Open Government Network – an umbrella group of civil society groups and transparency campaigners – said more transparency could "secure significant and lasting change to the way government and wider society operates".
A spokesperson added: "Too often governments can use the language of openness as a facade to cover inaction or regression on critical issues.
"Governments in the UK are not exempt from this, and we must ensure that openness and accountability are embedded across its institutions. We will continue to collaborate with and hold government to account for its progress."
The government's latest plan came as the NAO published a new summary of the government's efforts to overhaul its commercial operations, again highlighting the challenges that Whitehall faces in opening up contracts to greater scrutiny.
"Providers’ accountability is greatly enhanced through increased transparency," the NAO said. "Contracting creates the opportunity for enhanced transparency over public services because it creates management information over performance and the costs of a service."
But the spending watchdog added: "Although government’s aim is to be transparent, it is not clear it has the ability to be. Its ambition and ability to publish transparency information remains hampered by weak information systems that mean that contract information, spend data and performance information cannot easily be brought together."