Crowdsourcing Government: Why Access Matters
A public right to data is key to unlocking the biggest enterprise opportunity of our time: integrating social media with public services. Open government combines transparency with citizen participation. This is the future of government. The Open Government Partnership is a new international initiative - bringing together more than 50 countries and international civil society - to share best practice in beating corruption, improving social justice and driving growth and innovation. The UK has put Transparency at the heart of its vision of social and economic growth and is one of the founder members of the OGP. This session also hears from other key founders of the OGP from around the world – including Samantha Power, special assistant to President Barack Obama and the architect of the initiative and Rakesh Rajani, a global civil society leader. The Future is Open: find out how to become an Open Government pioneer.
Presenters
Rakesh Rajani is the Head of Twaweza, meaning ‘we can make it happen’ in Swahili. Twaweza works across East Africa to enhance access to information, citizen agency and accountability in basic social service delivery. Until 2007 Rakesh served as the founding Executive Director of HakiElimu, Tanzania’s leading citizen engagement and education advocacy organization. He serves on several national and international boards, is a founding member of the Open Government Partnership, and has been a fellow of Harvard University since 1998, presently with its FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. Rakesh has written and edited over 300 papers and popular publications in English and Swahili. He studied at Brandeis and Harvard.
Tim Kelsey, Executive Director of Transparency and Open Data, UK Government
Tim Kelsey is the UK government's Executive Director of Transparency and Open Data. He leads on the development of national policy to promote Open Government. His appointment in January 2012 underlines Prime Minister David Cameron’s commitment to making Transparency a central priority for the British government.
Tim is a leading advocate of greater Transparency in public services and, in 2000, was co-founder of Dr Foster, a company which pioneered publication of patient outcomes in healthcare and became one of the UK’s top 10 fastest growing private businesses. Better data has led many NHS organisations to show demonstrable improvements in clinical performance.
In 2007, he launched NHS Choices, the national online health information service (www.nhs.uk) which now reports around 14m unique users per month.
In 2010, Tim joined McKinsey and Co to lead on the development of consumer information strategies for governments and public service administrations.
Tim was named a Reformer of the Year by the think-tank Reform in 2011. He received the award for 'Outstanding Contribution in Healthcare' from Health Investor magazine in 2008 and was awarded the annual award for 'Innovation' by Laing and Buisson in 2007. He is a member of the NHS National Quality Board and a trustee of the Nuffield Trust.
Before Dr Foster, Tim was a national newspaper journalist and a television reporter. He worked for the Independent and the Sunday Times, as well as Channel 4 and the BBC. Among others, he has interviewed Col Qaddaffi, Timothy McVeigh and Miles Davis. He is author of ‘Dervish: the Invention of Modern Turkey’ (Hamish Hamilton; Penguin).
Sunday, March 11
