Question
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the remarks by Lord Wallace of Tankerness on 13 January (HL Deb, cols 19–20), what progress they have made in fulfilling their commitments to make further improvements to the accessibility of government transparency information by (1) ensuring greater co-ordination of the publication of data sets so that all returns within a quarter can be found on one page, (2) improving the access to and presentation of those data, including by improving the consistency of presentation and titling, (3) ensuring greater consistency in the content of departmental reporting, particularly in including the subject of meetings, and (4) ensuring that the gov.uk transparency pages contain a link to the statutory register of lobbyists so that the data can be easily cross-referenced.
Answer
Cabinet Office regularly monitors adherence to departmental open data commitments, as well as timeliness of their publication across government. We are making regular efforts to improve access to and presentation of the data, including by improving the consistency of presentation and titling.
Steps have already been taken to improve the consistency of Ministers’, Senior Officials’ and Special Advisers’ transparency returns and technical improvements to the presentation of this data will be introduced for information published in 2015. The recently established independent Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists now has a web presence on gov.uk and the Government will ensure that the transparency pages of gov.uk provide a link to the statutory register once launched.