Unlocking the Power of Local Information

Once I’d freed my car from the snow and ice, my journey into the office, today, was wonderfully quick. Most of the outside of the A2 was still unusable, but the traffic was light. I can’t remember ever before driving into London without encountering a single queue!

Adrian Hancock and Elaine Davis met me at Direct House for a session on Business Partnership planning, and Steve Jones joined by audio-conference. Elaine and her husband flew-into Gatwick, yesterday, and will be in the UK for the next six weeks, during which time she will be working with the Events Team on the Spring Conference. We had a good meeting covering the partnership menu, revenue management, marketing and account management, sales, remuneration and data management.

We’ll continue to work on the proposition in the next two weeks, developing thinking on issues like the requirement for a commercial management role, and will meet again on 19th February, with a view to agreeing proposals to take to the Commercial Board on the 23rd.


The Government-sponsored “Power of Information Taskforce”, chaired by Richard Allan, former MP for Sheffield Hallam, has released a “beta version” of a report on liberalising non-personal government information. Richard will be speaking on “Unlocking the Power of Local Information” at the Socitm Spring Conference.

Coincidentally, I had a ‘phone conversation, today, with Richard Quarrell, about the PSIPHON project (to create tools to automate the creation of registers of public sector organisations’ Information Assets) that he and Adrian Norman presented to a Socitm Futures meeting, last November. To my great disappointment we (Socitm) have so far failed to progress the Working Party we committed to at that meeting. I arranged to meet with Richard on 16th to plan how to take this forward.