5.6: Beacon Award
Work with local government to develop and adopt a Power of Information Beacon award based upon criteria set out by the taskforce. Other Information:
Beacon Status - encouraging and rewarding excellence: The Taskforce talked with stakeholders and aired on its blog a low cost
approach for unlocking the power of information at low cost in Local Government. The Taskforce set out some simple rules in
plain English that would help a Local Authority encourage information reuse and save money by adopting a simple policy: Ensure
you have a copyright notice or a licence to tell people what they can and can’t do with your information (which is also your
intellectual property). Every local authority owns its own copyrights and database rights. You are required by law (the Public
Sector Information regulations) to publish the terms under which your material can be re-used. To minimise bureaucracy and
cost it makes sense for your information to be available for people to re-use for free under a simple standard licence. The
best way to do this is using the plain English “PSI Click-Use Licence”, administered by the Office of Public Sector Information,
part of the National Archives. All you need to do is adopt a policy for your Council’s information to be licensed by “The
Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office”, who also licences Crown copyright information for the government. This is
explained here The wording you will need for the mandate is at this link Following such critieria should reduce cost to the
local authority, by doing something once rather than many times. It could also foster local economic and third sector activity.
Where leading local authorities take such measures they should be recognised and rewarded. The IDEA ‘Beacon’ scheme is a prestigious
award scheme that recognises excellence in local government. The IDEA website describes Beacon thus. ‘The Beacon Scheme was
set up to disseminate best practice in service delivery across local government….Themes are selected for each round of the
scheme by government ministers. The themes represent issues which are important in the day-to-day lives of the public and
reflect key government priorities. Themes are announced one or two years in advance and some themes will be repeated in future
rounds. Beacon status is granted to those authorities who can demonstrate a clear vision, excellent services and a willingness
to innovate within a theme. Awards are made by government ministers based on recommendations made by an independent advisory
panel.’ TheTaskforce has discussed with CLG the possibility of a Beacon award for excellence in power of information. Recommendation
CLG should work with local government to develop and adopt a Power of Information Beacon award based upon criteria set out
by the taskforce.
Indicator(s):
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