A House of Lords committee has asked Computer Weekly to give
evidence at a hearing in Parliament today into openness and the
quality or otherwise of government communications with the media
and the public.
Executive editor Tony Collins is due to appear, together with
other witnesses including BBC political editor Nick Robinson, ITV
political editor Tom Bradby, Sky News policital editor Adam
Boulton, Nigel Hawkes, health editor at The Times and Frank
Gardner, the BBC's security correspondent.
The Lords' communications committee, chaired by Lord Fowler,
asked Computer Weekly to give evidence following articles on
ComputerWeekly.com and the IT Projects blog including examples of
how government communications operate in practice.
In campaigning for measures to reduce the number of failures of
some government IT-related projects, Computer Weekly has called for
more openness on risky IT programmes.
The articles provided evidence of ministers giving incorrect
information to Parliament, and senior officials or PR specialists
taking action to suppress independent criticism on major IT
projects, including the
NHS's National Programme for IT [NPfIT].
Computer Weekly has also raised concerns over how the programme
was announced before any serious consultation with the medical
profession, IT executives, and the public.
One concern about too much secrecy and insufficient external
scrutiny is that incorrect political assumptions about how quickly
a project can be implemented, and what direction it should take,
may go unchallenged. There is also a danger that complacency can
blight the way some departments and agencies are managed.
Senior staff at HM Revenue and
Customs, for example, were unaware of the seriousness of the
department's systemic managerial weaknesses until the publication
last month of the independent
Poynter report into
two missing CDs containing the details of 25 million people
Some sets of minutes of meetings of the NPfIT programme board
are so positive throughout that they exclude any reference to
delays and the impact of them on trusts.
The Lords inquiry will focus on the implementation of the
reforms to government communications recommended by a review in
2004 by Sir Robert Phillis, former chief executive of the Guardian
Media Group
The committee's members want to know far the recommendations in
the
Phillis review have been implemented. The seven key principles
for government communications set out in the Phillis review
are:
- Openness, not secrecy.
- More direct, unmediated communications with the public.
- Genuine engagement with the public as part of policy formation
and delivery, not communication as an afterthought.
- Positive presentation of government policies and achievements,
not misleading spin.
- Use of all relevant channels of communication, not excessive
emphasis on national press and broadcasters.
- Co-ordinated communication of issues that cut across
departments, not conflicting or duplicated departmental
messages.
- Reinforcement of the Civil Service's political neutrality,
rather than a blurring of government and party
communications.
Lord Fowler said: "We want to know if the culture of secrecy and
partial disclosure has been changed We will also examine the rules
governing the conduct of special advisers and whether their role in
relationship to civil servants is now clear. It is vital that the
government communications system should be both open and
impartial".