WRITTEN ON June 8th, 2007 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Design: Co-creation, Power of Information, Save Time and Money, What do we want?

Tom Steinberg and Ed Mayo launched their advice to the government about The Power of Information on Wednesday. It is, in executive summary, pretty cool. It’s written in plain English with no political or Web 2.0 jargon, very expert, and matches a high level of wisdom about what is realistic and achievable with good and ambitious intentions.

Hilary Armstrong, the Minister who commissioned it, was pretty cool at the launch:

There’s a whole world out there growing faster than anything we’ve ever seen before. It’s a fascinating challenge for government, I won’t deny that, and we have to think our way through it more carefully…we can’t put up brick walls or determine the framework.

They show how user-created content helps for example with managing medical conditions, food safety and in local communities.

This 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. To this end, the report recommends a strategy in which government:
– welcomes and engages with users and operators of user-generated sites in pursuit of common social and economic objectives;
– supplies innovators that are re-using government-held information with the information they need, when they need it, in a way that maximises the long-term benefits for all citizens; and
– protects the public interest by preparing citizens for a world of plentiful (and sometimes unreliable) information, and helps excluded groups take advantage.

it’s probably the first policy report to government written by people comfortable with the contetmpory Internet.It’s certainly the first report to government that has gone up on day one with a CommentonThis version

Look at the “hot words” in The Power of Information (information, government, public, online, services, user
) compared to the hot words in Transformational Government review (government, services, public, shared, information people).

As the Minister (my good pal Hilary) said

We have creative thinkers in this country, innovators driving this forward in ways we can hardly imagine