The following amendments have been selected: amendments 1, 2 and 3 in the name of Paul Davies, and amendment 4 in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth.

The next item is the debate on data and increasing openness and availability, and I call on the Minister for Skills and Science to move the motion—Julie James.

Motion NDM6507 Jane Hutt

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Notes the Welsh Government's commitment to open data through the publication and ongoing implementation of our first ever Open Data Plan.

2. Notes the progress Welsh Government has made to date, along with ongoing plans to increase the openness and availability of data.

3. Supports the Welsh Government ambition to draw on legislative powers to develop guidance that encourages greater publication and use of open data across the Welsh public sector.

4. Supports the Welsh Government's aim to adapt processes for acquiring goods or services to promote openness and transparency.

Motion moved.

Diolch, Llywydd. I’m very pleased to be opening this debate today to focus on how and why we should be increasing the openness and availability of data. I just wanted to start off by clarifying that by that I mean data that relates to non-personal and non-sensitive issues.

Our involvement in the Open Government Partnership initiative demonstrates that we are committed to being a more open, accountable and responsible-to-citizens Government. As with other areas of the UK, open data plays a key role in our Government’s ability to be a more open and responsive Government.

We all know that data is an extremely valuable resource in today’s world that, if made accessible, can provide numerous benefits and opportunities to both Governments and to our citizens. It’s becoming a critical part of the national infrastructure, and the benefits of a robust, open data ecosystem include improved openness, transparency and accountability, in that it provides a much better understanding of how Welsh Government and public services are performing, and how their budgets are being utilised. It can enable better planning and targeting of services, which in turn leads to increased efficiency, efficacy and savings. It can drive innovation and economic growth with the development of applications and enhance people’s daily lives, and consequently their economic ability to join in our society. It improves public empowerment and participation. It helps people make informed decisions and empowers them to participate much more actively in our society. It can also reduce the burden on Government of freedom of information requests, and help reduce the amount of data and reporting requirements that we’ve imposed on public authorities by making the information publicly and accessibly available to all of our citizens.

We’ve made good progress to date. We published our first ever open data plan in March 2016, and we’re improving our statistical and spatial open data platforms, StatsWales and Lle. Indeed, our well-being of Wales report, which was published yesterday, made direct use of the StatsWales open data, leading to a significant efficiency in development and future maintenance of that site. And more recently, we’ve been focusing on openly publishing management information.

However, whilst we’ve made good progress, there is still more that can be done, not only in opening up Welsh Government’s data but encouraging others to open up their data as well. For example, there is more for us to do on opening up access to management information. One area we are currently exploring is openly publishing public sector workforce data in terms of how many people are employed, at what level and so on. We’re also going to continue our implementation of the open data plan commitments.

A key factor in realising the associated benefits of all of this data is to ensure that our data is actually actively being used and reused, and that’s why it’s important that we identify ways in which we can encourage innovation in use. We are starting to some reuse of our data. More recently, the Wales Audit Office used our open data in a project to provide insight for their auditors, for example. We’d very much like to see more of this and would like to encourage those with the capability and skills to fully utilise our open data sets.

I want to give Members an example of what I mean by this. We, for example, publish food hygiene ratings for all of the restaurants in a particular area. At the moment, you might wander around and you might see those food hygiene ratings usefully placed on the doorways or prominently placed in the restaurants. But if you were a stranger to the area, you might not want to wander around all of the streets looking for different hygiene ratings. Because we publish the information in an open and accessible format, if you look up on an app store ‘food hygiene rating apps’, you can now get many apps—there is quite a long list of them—that will tell you where the highest and lowest food rating restaurants in the area you’re standing in are. And that’s a use—a commercial, innovative use—useful to the citizen, of open data published by the Government. It’s just a very good use of our data that’s useful to citizens. It’s not of any particular benefit to us, but it shows how you can drive improvement in citizen services by something as simple as somebody reordering it. Now, that data would have been available before, but it would have been a hugely difficult exercise for a person to actually align all of that, but you can see that a number of people have already picked up on that. So, that’s the sort of thing were trying to encourage. We’re very keen to see more of this, and we want to encourage those with the capability and skills to fully utilise our open datasets to make full use of them.

We are really keen that we work with others to arrange open data challenge events, bringing together people from various backgrounds, to highlight to them the real success that they can make in their venture of using our datasets to develop this sort of citizen service.

We are also developing other examples of how Welsh open data can have a positive impact and will help persuade others of the benefits of increasing the openness and availability of data. So, in conjunction with introducing guidance and adapting our processes for acquiring goods and services, we should have a real impact on the open data agenda in Wales by publishing all of that information.

So, I will be supporting the first amendment. We’re committed to reducing the burden associated with collecting data and, where possible, will support this through encouraging greater publication of open data. We’re very keen to improve data sharing in Wales, and we’re looking at how we can best make use of the data sharing provisions in the new Digital Economy Act 2017. We’ll also be supporting the second amendment. The Welsh Government recognises the importance of ensuring that the data we collect meets our users’ needs. We already regularly review our statistical data collections, consulting with a full range of stakeholders. We should also ensure information we capture from public authorities for other purposes is proportionate and minimised.

Unfortunately, we will not be supporting the third amendment. Whilst we aim to encourage local authorities to increase the amount of data they publish openly, we need to be mindful of the resource implications this would place on them. We are, however, working very hard with local authorities to identify what data should be published openly, including determining, for example, the feasibility of publishing expenditure over a minimum threshold.

We’ll also be supporting the fourth amendment. We agree in principle that we should seek to be able to compare our performance with the rest of the UK and, indeed, with other countries as well. However, this is not always currently possible due to policy divergence. And, first and foremost, our priority must be to monitor data relevant to the Welsh policy context.

So Llywydd, I'm very much looking forward to welcoming Members’ support of the principles of open data during this debate and embracing it across Welsh public life, and I also look forward to listening to your views on how we can encourage and drive forward the open data agenda to improve both the delivery of our public services and, of course, ultimately, the lives of our citizens. Diolch.

I have selected the four amendments to the motion. I call on Janet Finch-Saunders to move amendments 1, 2 and 3, tabled in the name of Paul Davies. Janet Finch-Saunders.

Amendment 1—Paul Davies

Add as new point at end of motion:

Calls on the Welsh Government to work with public, private and third sector organisations to improve data-sharing and reduce duplication in data collection across Wales.

Amendment 2—Paul Davies

Add as new point at end of motion:

Recognises the role of the Welsh Government in collaborating with key bodies and stakeholders to ensure that data collection focuses on obtaining the right information to influence and deliver positive changes in policy.

Amendment 3—Paul Davies

Add as new point at end of motion:

Believes that the Welsh Government should work to ensure that local authorities follow the example set by the Conservative-run Monmouthshire County Council in publishing all expenditure.

Amendments 1, 2 and 3 moved.

Thank you. And I move those amendments, as mentioned. Of course, openness and transparency are key things that my Welsh Conservative colleagues and I have long expounded the virtues of in this Chamber. A debate on increasing openness and accessibility of data is long overdue. Our first amendment aims for the Welsh Government to work with public, private and third sector organisations to improve data sharing and reduce duplication in data collection across Wales. Time and again, as AMs, we meet with organisations, particularly in the health and third sectors, and they raise issues of data duplication or non-collection with us. A classic example is that we’re on our second poverty enquiry and, throughout all the workshops, whenever we’ve met with witnesses, they’ve been very concerned about how data is collected across various organisations, how it is then shared and how the Welsh Government themselves collect and store data.

For such organisations, as well as us as politicians, open data is, of course, a valuable tool for policy development, scrutiny and competition. For example, the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee found in July this year that some of the key weaknesses of the Communities First programme actually stemmed from policies that were developed and performances being monitored in the absence of any actual appropriate data. Further to this, our second amendment seeks to ensure that data collection focuses on obtaining the right information to influence and deliver positive changes in policy. As noted by the parliamentary review of health and social care in Wales, debated in the Chamber last week, data needs to be published for the public to enhance transparency, understanding and trust in the system. Our third amendment therefore calls for local authorities to follow the fine example set by the Conservative-run Monmouthshire County Council. They publish all expenditure—something we will be pushing for further in the forthcoming local government legislation.

Llywydd, open data is essential to policy progression, service development and public accountability, yet, sadly, there are other basic areas in which the Welsh Government’s commitment to open data fails. And, isn’t it interesting—I didn’t get my chance to ask the question to the First Minister earlier—but in freedom of information requests that are used because of the lack of open data, the Welsh Labour Government only responded in full to just 46 per cent of those requests. That isn’t good enough for an open and transparent Government at any level.

This summer, the Cardiff Open Data Institute found failings on the Welsh Government’s part in relation to the national procurement service, stating that it has no open data plan. The work on the digital framework does not consider the Government’s open data plan at all, and this is a pity because open data and procurement are perfect partners. And, of course, Leighton Andrews, a previous AM here, has actually compiled this report and I’m not sure that Members are, perhaps, even aware of this report. This has been out and published since March of this year. How this relates to local authorities, or to the people out there—our electors and taxpayers—I have no idea.

One aim of the plan is to increase the Wales openness rating to four stars by May this year. Yet, nowhere on the website is this rating even noted, and the UK open government partnership national action plan 2016-18 notes that work in this area needs to be ongoing until the end of the year. The Welsh Government has been reluctant to publish information relating to the sale of land by the regeneration investment fund for Wales, as well as information on ministerial and Cabinet decisions on the Circuit of Wales.

Finally, the open data plan aims to reduce the need for FOI requests and to reduce the need to aggregate data to respond to data collection requests. Yet, the Welsh Government, only months ago, insisted on disapplying legislative measures for public bodies to proactively publish facilities time through their Trade Union (Wales) Act 2017. And I’ve mentioned about how badly they respond to FOIs themselves.

Llywydd, we are supportive of the aims of this debate and this plan, yet I am concerned that this document is just empty words and hollow sentiment. I therefore call on the Welsh Government to commit to ensuring that the yearly progress report on this plan by the office of the chief digital officer will be debated in this Chamber on an annual basis to ensure that all parties here are able to actually effectively scrutinise this strategy.

I call on Sian Gwenllian to move amendment 4, tabled in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth—Sian Gwenllian.

Amendment 4—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Add as new point at end of motion:

Believes that performance data should be collected and published in a manner that enables comparisons with other nations of the UK.

Amendment 4 moved.

Thank you, Llywydd, and I do move amendment 4. I will be using my contribution to this debate today to discuss why gathering performance-related data and publishing it in a way that can enable comparisons with other countries in the UK is important. Not only does it enable us as opposition parties to hold the Government to account, but it is also vitally important so that the Government can learn and share any good practice that exists in other nations in the UK, to ensure the best possible services for the people of Wales.

I would also point to how access to data is vitally important in the field of the economy, to ensure that policy is developed on the basis of the best possible information. With regard to health, the lack of data and the quality of that data means that planning services and specific policies and getting a full picture of the performance of services in the area of health is increasingly difficult. A lack of data and transparency in the health service is a cause for concern and frustrates our ability as opposition party members to scrutinise the Government with regard to the development of alternative and better policies.

Unfortunately, over the past few years, despite the recommendations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the report by the Nuffield Trust, there is less data available to make the comparison between Wales and other nations of the United Kingdom. For example, changes to the ambulance service targets and the way that data is collected mean that it’s no longer possible to compare where we are in Wales. This isn’t a debate in favour of restricting the freedom of Governments to pursue different policies. There is a way around this. However, it is right for us to demand that data needs to be gathered to compare the effect of different policies, especially when those policies develop along different paths. We need a Government that sees that information of a specific kind to meet specific needs is valuable as it puts together its policies, and this is true for all aspects of governance.

At present, there is a lack of information with regard to the economy specifically related to Wales, and this makes it difficult for policy makers to tailor a strategy according to the requirements of the Welsh economy. Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland figures are published every year by the Scottish Government, namely data that provides a specific analysis of the public sector. In April last year, a Welsh version was published by the Wales Governance Centre, and while we were pleased to see Cardiff University publishing a specific analysis of the Welsh economy, it is vital that this isn’t a one-off and that the Government itself commissions similar work on an annual and official basis. This should include an input and output table and a full set of public sector accounts, similar to the publication in Scotland, because that would lead to better policies that would, in turn, give a boost to growth, to productivity—. Before I move on, I will take an intervention.

I’m grateful to the Member for taking this intervention. The fundamental point, of course, is that the purpose of having an open data policy is that the data should be useful, particularly to citizens. One of the examples that is quoted by the Government on its website in terms of the open data plan is those tables that summarise grants over £25,000 per annum. The problem is that they are only available month by month. They are available for years, but you do have to search on a month-by-month basis. You can’t do something as simple as inputting the name of one company to find out how much that company has received. You have to go through every single Excel file on a monthly basis. So, could I appeal to Government that something as simple as a summary of data in one file would assist people in making use of the information that is published?

Thank you very much for that specific example, which does draw attention to the problem in detail and does show clearly why we have to be much more organised and effective in the way that we gather data and use that data for the benefit of this nation. Thank you.

Thanks to the Minister for bringing forward today’s debate. Now, the Government’s motion today looks perfectly benevolent in that nobody is really going to start arguing that we need less openness in the provision of Government data. What we do need to know, though, is what this greater openness will actually mean in practice. The future intentions of the Welsh Government in providing some new level of openness is all well and good, but how effective is their current provision of Government data and information in general?

Now, Adam Price raised a very specific example just now relating to the difficulties in obtaining Government statistics on grants, but if we look at how they disseminate information in general—in particular, thinking about how the citizen can access this information—it does pose rather a lot of difficulties. In terms of Government spending, the Conservatives raised this in one of their amendments; they’re talking about the publication of spending by public bodies such as local authorities. By coincidence, yesterday I met a couple of representatives from the Marine Conservation Society and they observed that you can’t actually track the level of Welsh Government spending on marine conservation because it’s packaged as part of a general spend in the field of the environment. So, they can’t actually ascertain, themselves, how much of that pot of money is actually being spent on marine conservation. So, that’s one example of where Welsh Government openness of data does need to improve.

But if we think about how the Welsh Government actually deal with information in general, they’re not, perhaps, as benevolent as today’s motion would appear and that they seem to or want to be in their aims. For instance, let’s have a look at the Government statements that we get before the Plenaries once a week. Now, it’s good that we get these, I’m not making a general complaint, but we do get them roughly an hour before—[Interruption.] It’s a courtesy, okay. Thank you for extending the courtesy, but the point is that we all know in this Chamber that we could get this information a lot earlier. We could have got this information probably at the end of last week. So, if you were really going for this policy of more openness, perhaps you could extend that to the field of how you disseminate the Government statements. We do welcome the courtesy, but if you could extend the courtesy, it would be good.

Now, if we look at the Welsh Government website, which is one place where the citizen may first come across Government information, when I mentioned the Welsh Government website to a staff member today, she had an immediate reaction to it. She said, and I quote her exact words, ‘Oh, God, it’s that website where you can’t find anything.’ When I asked her to expand on this remark, she stated that the search function doesn’t appear to work properly: ‘I can never seem to find what I want there and I have to end up Googling the information.’

Another staff member observed that it’s just not kept up to date. It’s all very well being a mouthpiece for whatever the Government want to push out, but if you want to find out about Government policy, it’s the last place you would go, because it’s out of date. They’ll make an announcement, and then they won’t update the page. Recent examples from my own experiences: the housing supply taskforce, set up in 2013—the page was last updated on 4 March 2014. It would appear that that body is now defunct, but the point is that we don’t actually know that from the Welsh Government website, because it doesn’t tell us. It seems to effectively leave things like this hanging in mid-air. It doesn’t make it clear whether the Welsh Government are doing anything in this field of activity or not. So, if this kind of information is to have any value, then the pages need to be regularly updated. Somebody should be specifically tasked with doing this, and also, defunct organisations, grants and schemes need to be removed from the website altogether. We could go on and look at other websites relating to the Government, but probably the point has been made.

So, in general, we do agree with what you’re saying in your motion today, and we only hope that it’s put in practice in some meaningful way. We also agree with the Conservative amendments, which seem to be largely sensible. Now, the Minister did raise the issue that there is a resource implication if you are publishing a lot of information, and I agree that there is going to be a balance and you have to look at that. But, in general, we do agree with the Conservative amendments. The Plaid amendment also seems sensible. Yes, we should integrate our data so that, as far as possible, Welsh Government performance is comparable with that of similar public bodies. But another important point for the future may be how easily obtainable Welsh Government information will be to the layperson or the citizen, as the Minister referred to the person, as well as to the specialist. Thank you.

I call on the Minister to reply to the debate— Julie James.

Well, I’m very grateful to Members for their support of the open data agenda, which is evident across the Chamber. I think there may be a little bit of confusion between what we mean by open data and open Government in this context and publication in general. I take the point about publication that people have made. I feel duty-bound—I’m sure the Llywydd won’t mind my saying so—to say that the idea of publishing an oral statement before it’s made orally is, obviously, problematic in many regards, and the whole point of an oral statement is you make it orally in the Chamber. I just wanted to reiterate that point, and that’s not at all connected to data.

I thought that Adam Price made a very good point in his example. The idea of open data is that you have access to the base data in an open and accessible way that allows you to collate it in different ways to come to different conclusions. So, the example is a good one. I’m not suggesting for one minute that the Government has this completely right, and one of the reasons I wanted to bring forward this debate today was to discuss openly with Members what we mean by that and to ascertain, as we have readily ascertained, that, actually, everybody agrees with the agenda. There are nuances around it, but we all agree that the base data should be made as accessible as possible in order for people to draw a variety of conclusions from it. We do have to do that in a proportionate way, of course. We have been working with public sector bodies, with participation, for example, in the Cardiff city region open data group, and meeting with local authorities and the Wales Audit Office across Wales.

We want to encourage others within the Welsh public sector, and wider public sector, to open up access and reuse our data, but also make their data more freely available. We are going to be giving consideration to the appropriateness of a non-statutory code of practice for the public sector in Wales, to enable us to work collaboratively with public sector bodies. Successful trials of that guidance might well lead to a statutory code of practice, but that is something we want to produce together with our local government partners in a spirit of co-production, so that we understand and they understand where we are now, and where we can go to easily and fluidly in the future without an enormous cost to that—not in financial terms, but in terms of the person power needed to do it.

Janet Finch-Saunders alluded to the procurement processes. I absolutely agree with her that adapting our procurement processes will encourage our suppliers to publish their data openly and make use of our open data sources to make that a more transparent process. [Interruption.]

On that very point, I was wondering if it would be possible for the Minister to answer now or to have a word with her Cabinet Secretary colleague on whether open data, or a commitment to open data, will form a part of the commitment under the rail franchise, because there there is a very real gain to be had in terms of integration between bus and train services, if it is designed in such a way as data is automatically shared between different transport providers into the future.

Yes, absolutely. I think the point of the debate, really, is that we need to look backwards a little bit at our systems, but as we develop new systems, we need to develop them in the spirit of open data insofar as that’s possible and permissible and doesn’t reveal any personal or sensitive information. So, I think I can absolutely say that, and we need to design those systems in in the first place. After all, we’re in a change in our culture and practice in our society about how we use data and how we regard it, and we need to make sure that we fully realise the benefits of the data sets available to us in planning services and reviewing our efficiency and effectiveness, and then rewarding ourselves, if you like, with the improvements that come from that renewed use of data. So, I think that’s another very good point.

But as I was saying, in terms of the procurement process, for example, one of the things we want to encourage is not just the open supply of data from the Government, in terms of what is procures, but actually open data from our suppliers, in terms of where they are procuring from and what their processes are, so that people can put two and two together and not make five in terms of the applications that can arise from that.

I very much wanted to end on that point, really. What this is actually about is about holding us to account and holding us accountable for the data that we produce. It’s not the same as publication of policies and so on. This is about the base data underneath that, so you can see—. When we put forward a policy on open data, for example, you can go back and look at the data we currently hold and see whether we’re holding true to that. You don’t just look at when we publish the policy itself.

We have a challenging economic climate; we need to make the most of the resources available to us all. One of the new resources in the twenty-first century is indeed data, and the Government needs to make sure that as we create more data than ever before, it’s imperative that we make that data accessible, useable, reusable, innovative. So, I’m very, very grateful that Members embrace the agenda, that we’ve started the transition, if you like, from understanding the base data that we’re talking about here, how it translates into our policy agenda, how we can publish that in a reusable form that will drive the innovative businesses in Wales that we need for the future, and also drive the public service improvement that we’d all like to see. Diolch, Llywydd.

The proposal is to agree amendment 1. Does any Member object? Amendment 1 is therefore agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Amendment 1 agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

The proposal is to agree amendment 2. Does any Member object? Amendment 2 is therefore agreed.

Amendment 2 agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

The proposal is to agree amendment 3. Does any Member object? [Objection.] I will defer voting until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.