Power of Information, indeed
A government-commissioned review published yesterday recommends broader and deeper application of information control-freakery across the internet.
The working assumption of the review is that retailers and resellers, of any kind, should channel (no pun intended) their energies towards influencing government.
‘Whitehall is arguably Britain’s most important knowledge factory, but we’re using out of date tools,’ said Minister for Transformational Government Tom Watson yesterday, announcing ‘The Power of Information’ review by correct-thinking Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg.
The report was commissioned by the cabinet office a year ago (nice work if you can get it) and this is just an interim report, so its authors still have a way to go on the public gravy train.
The press release at the time opened as follows: ‘Minister for the Cabinet Office Hilary Armstrong wants Government to harness the phenomenon of internet advice sharing sites and empower people with information that could help improve their lives.’
Wow. So the man in Whitehall still knows best – he’s just not explaining himself properly.
The report contains no explanation of the billions of pounds wasted trying to digitise Whitehall’s cumbersome hard copy procedures, instead of installing an off-the-shelf database management solution.
No need to wonder why: a modern database management system would render a wide range of state employees redundant – kryptonite to the New Labour regime.
On the heels of revelations that anonymous cadres in the bloated Defence and Health bureaucracies are making thousands of changes to Wikipedia, the Mayo/Steinberg report argues that ‘government could now grasp the opportunities that are emerging in terms of the creation, consumption and re-use of information. Current policy and action is not yet adequate to grasp these opportunities.’
Steinberg’s blog tells us that he doesn’t like ‘a world in which the likelihood of an issue being acted on depends on how well it flukes a position in the news cycle,’ and sneers at public debate as ‘an issue on which at least one columnist from each national newspaper has vented their prejudices.’
It’s called democracy, Tom. When a government systematically controls information, we call it totalitarianism.
