London council widens access to data

From the end of October 2010 the council's data about payments to suppliers will be downloadable from the Spotlightonspend website, run by Spikes Cavell, in the open spreadsheet .csv format. A spokesperson for the council told GC News : "We had put the list in a PDF on our website, but this allows us to manipulate that data and interrogate it, rather than just being about viewing a list. It makes the data much more meaningful." The Spotlightonspend system is already used by 12 other councils, but Hammersmith and Fulham says it is publishing more data, including payments to the voluntary sector, members' allowances and expenses and the council's register of assets, including buildings and land. Harry Phibbs, cabinet minister for community engagement, said: "The vast majority of spending any council undertakes is not payments to suppliers, but rather its ongoing running costs and operational investments. "Information not only needs to be transparent and accessible, but also intelligible to the general public so that it is meaningful and easily understood. It's useless to simply have raw data. It needs to be presented in a format people can follow. "We saw tremendous scope to work closely with Spikes Cavell and its Spotlightonspend platform to take transparency much further, and we're very pleased to be entering this collaboration." In an article published by the Daily Mail Phibbs made suggestions for council cost cutting. They included sending children in care to boarding schools; stopping fair trade coordinators and diversity offices; and closing old fashioned public lavatories.