

Many of us have been campaigning for open government data for a long time, and I think we've won the argument. By the time you're reading this, - a central listings service for government data - should be live. But data taken alone rarely creates real, tangible change in the world. Data alone doesn't get your rubbish recycled or your prescription filled. You need data to find out how or where to do those things, but actually doing them requires you to use public services - and wherever there's a public service, there's an IT system supporting it.

The next generation of innovation should be around open APIs (application programming interfaces) for the systems that power our interactions with government. APIs allow computer systems to interoperate by giving instructions to each other through a standard interface. With appropriate controls, these APIs should be made public, so that people can innovate around new ways to provide public services.

This has already begun to happen. One council has made an API that allows the popular mySociety service,, to insert reports directly into its database. FixMyStreet isn't built on top of any government service. It normally has to email reports to councils and hope for the best. Not ideal, and there's lots government could do to help.

Getting people back into work is a particularly interesting area for this kind of innovation. Government currently pays benefits, in the form of Jobseeker's Allowance, to unemployed people who are looking for work. The allowance helps people meet their basic needs while they're job-hunting.

If you had a clever idea for a new way to help people find work, you should be able to enrol them for Jobseeker's Allowance, submit those applications electronically, and be paid a commission. The government could structure the commission so that it encouraged desirable outcomes - like a higher commission for someone who's on benefits for a shorter period.

With a system like that, you'd have more than a clever idea: you'd have a business model. Your socially beneficial idea would be one with a solid financial footing for you to build from. Open APIs would make it much more practical for people to innovate around these services, and others.

Of course, there is potential for abuse, or for the system to be gamed. Open APIs would require a lot of careful thought - but if we can get them right, their potential is huge. Innovation is what we need to really improve public services, but you won't get that from quasi-competition between parts of the public sector, or from ministerial orders to be more creative.

After all: writing up a benefits application is a generic, bureaucratic process. Why should Government have a monopoly on it when others might be able to do better?

Harry Metcalfe created and, sits on the boards of the Open Rights Group and FreeLegalWeb and is managing director of The Dextrous Web.

Read other articles from the Rebooting Britain series

- Tax people back into the cities
- Teach kids to see in four dimensions
- Exercise a green foreign policy
- Open democracy to the online masses
- Reinvent the way we live together
- Live life as a lottery
- Pull the plug on broadcast regulation
- Enact beta versions of new laws
- Make carbon emissions hurt
- Slash the universities and go virtual
- Make policy using prediction markets
- Transform cities into green jungles
- Promote another crash
- Ditch Twitter: it's dangerous for democracy
- Encourage failure
- Make education more flexible


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