Based on material published by the States itself, the Guernsey Deputy Scorecard lets voters see if States members are attending meetings, doing what they said they would do and how they are running the island.
Its latest headline finding is that while the ‘rebellion’ against a goods and services tax was real, the anti-GST promises by deputies were not.
It also discloses that one States member has spoken just 325 words in the Assembly, and fully 50% of all manifesto promises made have yet to be tested.
The free dashboard, which it is understood has been delayed to enable deputies to comment on its findings, has been created because Guernseyman Will Walter could not find answers to crucial questions about the island.
‘I did not build this to catch anyone out,’ he said. ‘I built it because I wanted to be able to answer, from a single place and without taking anybody’s word for it, the questions every islander is entitled to ask: Is my deputy doing what they said they would? Are we, as a community, getting more prosperous or less? Will my children ever be able to buy a home here? If I am taken ill, will I be seen faster in Guernsey than in Jersey? And are our schools serving the next generation, or failing them?’
Mr Walter, who runs a specialist PR and public affairs consultancy in London and Guernsey, said each one of those questions had a published answer somewhere.
‘But not one of them was easy to find,’ he said.
Which is why the scorecard has been built to pull together huge volumes of data into a visual dashboard so others can also track how deputies act and how their decisions match their manifesto commitments or affect the island, its economy and wellbeing of islanders.
He said the difficulty in accessing information was considerable.
‘Recorded crime has never, as far as I can find, been published as a single continuous series – I had to rebuild it from 11 overlapping annual reports, and in 18 years no source has published a rate per head of population.’
For instance, A&E performance sits in a contract appendix. Life expectancy sits in a wellbeing bulletin.
‘None of this is hidden, exactly. It is just scattered, inconsistent, and effectively out of reach for anyone with a job. AI is what closed that gap for me in days. It should not have needed to,’ said Mr Walter.
His website shows, for example, that real growth after allowing for inflation, has averaged well under 1% a year in the decade to 2023, and in 2023 the real economy did not merely slow, it shrank by 2%.
‘Had we simply grown at Jersey’s pace over that same decade, our output in 2023 would have been around £683m. higher.’
The scorecard is available at bridgeheadcommunications.com/guernsey. Mr Walter, who grew up in the island, said it is free to use, carries no advertising, and was not commissioned by any deputy, committee, party or client.
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