Guernsey Press

Cracking the website riddle reveals host of information

Data the States has on a wealth of topics and is willing to share in the public interest can be found on its internet portal. However, sourcing these reports remains a maze that can only really be navigated by those who already know where they need to end up

Published

FOR an organisation that has more data at its fingertips then ever before, some parts of the States have a remarkable way of obscuring it from view.

Take the College of Further Education, as the committee in charge of it ponders how much fees should rise for adult education classes.

If you went back to accounts from years gone by you would have found details of how CoFE pay costs had changed, utility bills, training costs and, importantly, pupil numbers.

In the interests of streamlining the accounts, all that data has now gone by the wayside.

It does not even appear in the committee's annual report, where presumably it should have migrated to.

These are the kind of things that initially do not appear to matter – they are easy to miss, swamped by other more immediate issues.

But it means the committee can avoid pesky questions about changing trends and losing the opportunity for accountability that transparency with this data provides.

It does not take long until it becomes the accepted norm and the information is lost to public view for evermore.

And it only truly matters when, all of a sudden, the committee acknowledges that all is not right, in this case with the finances at the college, and it needs to make more money.

All of a sudden the community ends up footing an increasing bill, potentially for inefficiencies within the operation that they have nothing to do with and know even less about.

The public expectation when the States comes digging into their back pockets is to know exactly why.

The repercussions for not being open with statistics was all too readily exposed during the GCSE fiasco – it may have been two States terms ago, but the lesson still reverberates loudly today.

It is not just Education.

As we embark on a waste strategy that will more than double household bills, and with millions already being spent, it would be helpful to know how effective current measures have been.

Where once we had quarterly reports on waste figures, now it is down to an annual one, and that had not even been published by July as the team is busy implementing the wealth of changes needed to allow export to happen.

Then there are other data sets that you just cannot believe are not readily published as they are elsewhere, including prosecution rates and court statistics.

It is not only about publishing information, but also how it is released.

The States website remains a maze that can only really be navigated by those who already know where they need to go.

Searching for old reports is complete pot luck – these are often important when the States decides it is no longer going to tell you what it once did, or wants to lazily forget policy commitments.

Want to know what buildings the States owns or leases and what it wants to do with them? It was all published in a Billet once, if you can find it by remembering exactly when.

Want more information on the L'Ancresse sea wall project? It is there by the bucket load, just not by searching for L'Ancresse sea wall, or L'Ancresse, or L'Ancresse east.

You have to know that it is Environment & Infrastructure which is responsible, and click on the relevant link for that committee's work, then you have to know to go to coastal defence, and then to current projects. Layer after layer after layer of presumed knowledge.

And it is a shame, because there is a lot of really good background to the debate contained there. (Ironically, it is easier to find the requete questioning the demolition project than it is to find the information supporting it.)

And if you have an interest in the future of fuel supplies, there is a wealth of information available by cracking the website riddle.

Then there are the areas that get forgotten about.

For instance, the website is meant to be updated regularly through the summer with readings of bathing water quality at the main swimming beaches.

Until a query from this newspaper last week, the most recent information was for last year.

This is all data the States has and is willing to share in the public interest – it has just slipped through the net.

Scratch beneath the surface and there is a wealth of useful and interesting information about the public services which a lot of the time you can, eventually, get hold of – but that is the pull rather than the push.

We have been promised another step forward with the access to public information scheme, especially in terms of internal procedures.

That should help too, because it embeds good practice, where the release of data in a useful, digestible and accessible form is the starting point, not an afterthought.

It should not have to be wrung from a committee as it announces controversial policy changes and there should be a consistency in approach which is not always witnessed at the moment. And as things improve, we all have to be careful that data we were accustomed to using does not quietly get dumped along the way.

Sorry, we are not accepting comments on this article.