DATA PROTECTION 11�

Transparency Policy London Borough of Barnet

Transparency Policy

Document control

Description Transparency Policy

Version V2.0

Created

Status

Authorisation Name Date

Prepared by Jon Hill – Information Management Officer 14/11/16

Checked by Jenny Obee – Head of Information

Management

16/11/16

Approved by Jenny Obee – Head of Information

Management

16/11/16

Version control

Version no. Date Author Reason for new version

V1.1 21/11/14 Jon Hill Full update

V2.0 03/08/16 Jon Hill Updates include expectations of

Delivery Units & Partners, addition of

benefits and updated legislation, as

well as removal of redundant

elements.

Date last reviewed: [November 2016] Date of next review: [November 2017]

Transparency Policy

Contents

1 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 2 Purpose ............................................................................................................ 1 3 Benefits ............................................................................................................ 1 4 Scope ............................................................................................................... 2

5 Definitions ......................................................................................................... 2 6 Why we publish ................................................................................................ 3 7 Information Management Team responsibilities ............................................... 5

8 Delivery Unit and partner responsibilities ......................................................... 6 9 How to publish .................................................................................................. 6 10 Associated documentation ............................................................................... 8 11 Contact Information/Further Guidance ............................................................. 9

Appendix A: Public Sector Transparency Board: Public Data Principles ................... 10 Appendix B: Local Government Transparency Code – October 2014 ....................... 11 Appendix C: Declaration & Commitment to Transparency ........................................ 21 Appendix D: London Borough of Barnet core metadata set ...................................... 23

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1 Introduction

The transparency policy sets out the council wide approach to publishing public information and data sets. It provides guidance on opening up access to the council’s information, thereby enabling greater value to be generated from the council’s data assets, and increasing opportunities for residents to hold the council to account

2 Purpose

The purpose of the policy is to outline the council wide approach to transparency; to outline the minimum statutory requirements as well as Barnet’s proactive approach to publishing. The policy sets out key definitions, guidelines for what to publish, and how to publish information. It also explains the expected approach from internal and external delivery units.

3 Benefits Our residents should be able to hold us to account about the services we provide, how we make decisions, and how money is spent, in order to judge value for money and efficiency. Greater transparency makes this easier. It can highlight inadequacies, poor performance, and enforce improvements in service delivery.

In addition there are huge benefits to making information available in a transparent fashion for use by the public and other organisations:

Public data can be used for comparative purposes and to drive up performance;

Information about existing services’ functions and performance will ensure more focussed bids from potential providers, and increase competition;

Data sets and information may be useful to businesses, third sector organisations, and residents, which leads to wider social, economic, and environmental benefits;

Data sets may be used for the development of apps and other tools by third parties.

Publication of data and information is proven to result in a channel shift away from Freedom of Information and other information requests, thus freeing up officer resources.

Through the implementation of the Open Barnet data portal and introduction of the Transparency Commitment Statement, as well as numerous other work-streams, Barnet has built itself a national reputation for setting high standards in the field of Transparency and Open Data. This has led to us being recognised as one of only 16 Local Government Transparency Champions by the Cabinet Office.

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4 Scope This policy applies to all internal delivery units. Particular requirements for particular service areas are specified below. With regard to external delivery units and partners the policy applies where that organisation is processing council data. In addition the council expects partners to publish copies of contracts and tenders to businesses and to the voluntary community and social enterprise sector and encourages them to use this policy for their internal workings. Where possible transparency and open data agreements should be built into contracts and delivery units should work with providers to ensure data is formatted consistently and to high standards in order for it to be best suited for transparent publication.

5 Definitions

Data is raw, unorganised facts that need to be processed to create information suitable for making decisions. Information is what data becomes when it is processed, organised, structured or presented in a given context so as to make it useful. Public data is information which is collected or generated in the course of public service delivery. It is the objective, factual data, on which policy decisions are based and on which public services are assessed. The public have a right of access to public data and, where possible, it should be available by default or on request. Data will not be disclosed if it contains personal information or is of a commercially sensitive nature. However it may still be possible to publish it by anonymising or aggregating it. Barnet council’s approach to publishing is guided by the Public Data Principles (see Appendix A). Datasets are generated when data is stored. Data might be listed in a simple spreadsheet with few or multiple columns, or in a database. The Freedom of Information Act defines a data set as a collection of factual information in electronic form to do with the services and functions of the authority which is neither the product of analysis or interpretation, nor an official statistic and has not been materially altered. Schema - combining and comparing datasets is much easier where they take the same format. Formats are defined by individual ‘schemas’ for datasets. A basic schema can simply be the definition of rows and columns used in the dataset.

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Metadata is defined as the data providing information about one or more aspects of the data, such as:

Means of creation of the data

Purpose of the data

Time and date of creation

Creator or author of the data

Location on a computer network where the data were created

Standards used Transparency within this policy refers to the honest and accountable communication of the council’s data and information. This means releasing data and information which is not subject to distortion or selection, which is representative if not complete, and which is not misleading. Transparent information is provided in forms that can be easily accessed, understood and analysed.

Open data is data anyone is able to access, use, reuse and redistribute – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike. Open Data is linked to Transparency but is derived from a much wider approach that looks at all the data that exists across the public and private sector. Its driving principles are built on the premise of releasing the huge potential of joining data together. Open data is all about the format and provision of that data as opposed to Transparency, which is more about how citizens get access to that data.

6 Why we publish 6.1 Legal drivers 6.1.1 Local Government Transparency Code 2015 The Local Government Transparency Code sets out the minimum data that local authorities should be publishing, the frequency it should be published and how it should be published. A full breakdown of what is expected from the code can be found at Appendix B.

It is the council’s statutory duty to ensure that all elements in the second column of the table are published.

It is council policy that we will aim to match all elements recommended for publication in the third column of the table.

6.1.2 Freedom of Information act 2000 & Data Protection Act 1998 The starting point for all decisions to publish data and Information should be the principles of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The council recognises that it has a responsibility to provide a right of access to the information that it holds. It also recognises that it has a duty of care towards the public, clients

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and staff where it holds information on them, including its duties contained within the Data Protection Act. In deciding whether to publish information the council will take into consideration whether it is lawful to release that information and whether the public interest in publishing that information outweighs the public interest in withholding it. Public data will generally not include personal information or commercially sensitive information. Public data can only include personal information if disclosure would not contravene the Data Protection Act, and disclosure of personal information should be necessary to meet a legitimate public interest. 6.1.3 The INSPIRE Directive 2007 European Directive 2007/2/EC1 is known as 'INSPIRE'. INSPIRE establishes an infrastructure for spatial information in the European Union and it was transposed into UK law in December 2009. The aim of INSPIRE is to facilitate better environmental policy across the EU. This will be achieved by:

improving the joining up of and access to existing spatial data across the European Union at a local, regional, national and international level;

facilitating improvements in the sharing of spatial data between public authorities; and

improving public access to spatial data. The Directive was incorporated into the European Economic Area Agreement by EEA Joint Committee Decision (JCD) No 55/2010 of 30 April 2010, which entered into force on 1st July 2011.

Public access to official information has shown to improve the public’s confidence and trust when government and public sector bodies are seen as being open.

6.2 Government Policy Drivers: Open data white paper: Unleashing the potential – Presented to Parliament by the Minister of State for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General by the Command of Her Majesty June 20122

Open Government Partnership (OGP):Open Data Charter. The Charter on open data signed by G8 leaders (at Lough Erne in 2013) to promote transparency, innovation and accountability3.

1 INSPIRE EU Directive

2 Open data white paper: Unleashing the potential

3 Open Government Partnership (OGP):Open Data Charter

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Improving the transparency and accountability of government and its services

published in May 2013.

6.3 Internal drivers 6.3.1 Declaration and Commitment Statement to Transparency

The council’s Declaration and Commitment Statement to Transparency (Appendix C) was agreed by Members at the Policy and Resources Committee in June 2014.

The Statement underlines and embeds the council’s efforts to be an exemplary local authority in the increasingly high profile world of government transparency and sets out the expectations.

The Statement sets out the principles under which we will work to be as transparent as possible: Principle 1: open data by default - establishes an expectation that data will

be published openly by default, where possible. Principle 2: quality, quantity and timely - release high-quality open data

that is timely, comprehensive, and accurate. Principle 3: usable by all - release data in open formats wherever possible,

ensuring that the data is available to the widest range of users for the widest range of purposes.

7 Information Management Team responsibilities

The council’s Information Management Team (IMT) is responsible for the following activities:

Providing access to open data and resources to facilitate insight and

innovation

Providing a method of publication of all data provided, as well as a

resource to administrate the portal and upload datasets.

Facilitate a reduction in the process and number of Freedom of

Information Requests through identifying key datasets for publication.

Respond to all queries regarding Transparency & Open Data in a timely

fashion.

Assist Delivery Units with data discovery and the identification of

relevant datasets

Provide advice and guidance as to the benefits of Open Data and

Transparency, as well as the use of data and information in service

provision.

Ensure that impact on Delivery Units is minimised by promoting solutions

that reduce processes and/or require minimal resource.

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8 Delivery Unit and partner responsibilities

Publish or otherwise provide to IMT all statutory datasets and other

information to defined deadlines,.

Provide IMT with timely updates to existing datasets, ensuring data

quality is maintained.

In co-ordination with the Transparency & Open Data Officer, identify new

datasets for publication, notifying the Transparency & Open Data Officer

when these will be available for publication.

Assist the Transparency & Open Data Officer with providing new, as yet

unpublished and non-statutory datasets.

Undertake in consultation with IMT that all provided datasets are

cleansed of personal data or otherwise confidential information.

9 How to publish

Information and data should be accurate and of good quality, it should be timely (i.e. published as soon as possible following production), and it should be published in an open format where possible. The publication scheme The council uses its website as the method of publication, where it maintains a publication scheme that outlines the information it routinely publishes. This acts as an inventory for our data holdings, and aids people wishing to make use of data and information by categorising it. Publication schemes are mandated for public authorities by the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Open Barnet The council has created the Open Barnet data portal in order to best provide our data to the public in the most open and transparent way. All council datasets suitable for publication should be published on the portal. IMT is responsible for the administration of the portal. The council will aim to publish information in an open format that can be retrieved, downloaded, indexed and searched by commonly used Web search applications. In addition, it may also publish the information in easily readable and printable versions, or provide key pieces of information or a high level explanation alongside data sets. Data and information should only be published in one place, in order to avoid duplication, with links between the website and portal where relevant.

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Licensing Each published dataset will require a specified licence for re-use. This will usually be the Open Government Licence for public sector information, unless council copyright applies in which case it will use an appropriate licence from the UK Government Licensing Framework. Where third party data or other licensing restrictions apply the council will aim to provide a named attribution. Further information on licensing can be found in the FOI Toolkit. Format Publication must be in open and machine-readable formats wherever possible. Barnet’s minimum standard for publishing will be:

available on the web with a specified licence;

available as machine-readable structured data; (e.g. Excel instead of image scan of a table);

in a non-proprietary format where possible (e.g. CSV and XML).

Metadata A transparent data set should be provided with clear background information alongside it so users understand it. This should explain what a data set contains, and further information to put the information into context and aid understanding. Metadata should be provided with a data set, containing a description, temporal coverage, update process, data maintainer, source, and any third party or licensing conditions. An example metadata, based on the Dublin Core set, is shown in Appendix E. Standardisation The council will also work towards adhering to common formatting standards and standardising data through the use of common schemas. This will ensure that our data sets can be reliably compared and linked between service areas and to the data of other public sector organisations. Standardisation means:

using consistent definitions of the meaning of the values in the data;

using common reference schemes to refer to common items. The LGA provides local practitioners guides on publishing local spending data, salaries information, and new contracts and tenders information. LG Inform provide a service list which acts as a definitive classification list for local authority services.

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Data discovery The first principle of the council’s Declaration and Commitment Statement to Transparency states that our information should be open by default. In order to achieve this goal, Delivery Units should use the following themes to identify and prioritise what data to share and how to make it available:

Consultation with service users, residents, external organisations and businesses, and gather feedback to improve the data offer

Staff input on what may be most useful for service provision and residents

Strategic priorities and business plans

FOI and complaints themes for the service area – e.g. what information is routinely asked for, where could information assist the public before they get to the complaint stage?

Website intelligence – e.g. which pages on the council website get the most traffic?

Data Quality

It is important that all council data maintains a high standard of data quality wherever possible. More information on this can be found in the Data Quality Policy.

However, it is considered preferable to publish limited or incomplete datasets than no data at all. Publication can act as a driver to improve the quality of unsatisfactory datasets.

Guidance Further information with regard to the roles and responsibilities associated with the Open Barnet portal can be found in the council’s Open Barnet Best Practice Guidance or from the Information Management Team, details below.

10 Associated documentation

Data Protection Policy Data Protection Act Compliance Toolkit Data Quality Policy Declaration and Commitment Statement to Transparency DPA Data Transfer Policy DPA Staff Guidance FOI Policy FOI Staff Guidance Information Management Strategy Local Government Transparency Code 2015 Open Barnet Best Practice Guidance

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11 Contact Information/Further Guidance

Further advice and guidance on Transparency is available from the Information Management Team. open.data@barnet.gov.uk (020) 8359 7072 London Borough of Barnet Building 2 North London Business Park Oakleigh Road South London N11 1NP

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Appendix A: Public Sector Transparency Board: Public Data Principles

The principles, drawn up by the Public Sector Transparency Board and revised as the result of consultation, are as follows: (1) Public data policy and practice will be clearly driven by the public and businesses that want and use the data, including what data is released when and in what form (2) Public data will be published in re-usable, machine-readable form (3) Public data will be released under the same open licence which enables free re-use, including commercial re-use (4) Public data will be available and easy to find through a single, easy-to use, online access point (www.data.gov.uk) (5) Public data will be published using open standards, and following relevant recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (6) Public data from different departments about the same subject will be published in the same, standard formats and with the same definitions (7) Public data underlying the Government’s own websites will be published in re-usable form (8) Public data will be timely and fine-grained (9) Release data quickly, and then work to make sure that it is available in open standard formats, including linked data forms (10) Public data will be freely available to use in any lawful way (11) Public data will be available without application or registration, and without requiring details of the user (12) Public bodies should actively encourage the re-use of their public data (13) Public bodies should maintain and publish inventories of their data holdings (14) Public bodies should publish relevant metadata about their datasets and this should be available through a single online access point; and they should publish supporting descriptions of the format provenance and meaning of the data http://data.gov.uk/library/public-data-principles

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Appendix B: Local Government Transparency Code – October 2014

Minimum and recommended data to be published

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For the website: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-government-transparency-code-2014

The Transparency Code (October 2014):

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/360711/Local_Government_Transparency_Code_2014.pdf

Frequently Asked Questions:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/360713/Local_Government_Transparency_Code_2014__-_FAQ.pdf

Impact Assessment: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/326686/Local_Government_Transparency_code_2014_-

_IA.pdf

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Appendix C: Declaration & Commitment to Transparency

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Appendix D: London Borough of Barnet core metadata set

The metadata set below is based on the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set

Version 1.1. Most of the fields noted below will be applicable to all datasets. It

should be noted that, whilst this is a good starting point for designing your

metadata set, there may be some fields that do not apply, and for the most

relevant and useful datasets it is likely there will be other fields you will need to

add.

Element Description

Title Typically, a Title will be a name by which the dataset or document is formally known.

Delivery Unit Delivery Unit responsible for dataset

Service Service area responsible for dataset

Data Owner Senior officer involved in running the relevant business area.

Creator In most cases this will be the data custodian/creator who creates and uses the data in their regular business.

Publisher Officer responsible for uploading data (NB: this will be IMT at first, but will be the responsibility of Delivery Units once the portal is in operation).

Subject The topic of the resource. Typically, the subject will be represented using keywords, key phrases, or classification codes.

Description Description may include but is not limited to: an abstract, a table of contents, a graphical representation, or a free-text account of the dataset.

Contributor An individual/organisation or team responsible for making contributions to the resource.

Date uploaded Date data physically uploaded

Frequency How often the data will be published/updated

Coverage Period of time the data covers

Retention period How long the data should remain published

Type The nature or genre of the dataset or document

Format The file type of the information uploaded. For documents this should generally be pdf, for datasets csv where possible.

Identifier URI number, where possible

Source A related dataset or system from which the described resource is derived – linked to using URI, where possible

Language Language data is in

Relation A related resource – linked to using URI, where possible

Rights Licensing information