Freedom of Information is good, don’t get me wrong. The recent [cref 2093 defeat of the government at the hands of the internet] is even better.

Best, however, would be the complete publication of all government records at the time of receipt for all information which does not pertain to the security of the nation.

I mean everything. All reports, white papers, statistics (whether ‘in progress’ or fully verified), budgets and status reports for government projects. Everything. If it doesn’t contain personal information part of an ongoing investigation by the police of MI5/MI6, it should be accessible on the internet and made available for public scrutiny.

Why? Well, what has been proved over the past few years is that there is more knowledge and interest in the general public than in any government think tank. There are specialists in fields like law, medicine and information security, and front-line workers in all fields, who would not work for the government in a thousand years, and yet are more than willing to give their time, for free, to analysing, refuting, supporting and debating government policies in their respective areas of expertise on the internet.

They are a resource which has never before been tapped, and they can help to make our country better forever.

There is an argument which says that a database of this nature would cost too much to implement, but Freedom of Information requests already cost a fortune to receive, process and respond to, and their existence would be entirely negated by a measure like this. Plus, it wouldn’t have to be backdated – you could start by scanning and making available all new reports and correspondence in, say, the Department for Transport. Once the system has been fully tested, it could be rolled out across other areas such as Education and the DWP. After that, the Home Office. Eventually you could even make treasury records public knowledge.

Over time, you’d have a database of everything – and more importantly you’d have a process in place which makes the publication of government information the normality.

I personally cannot think of a single reason that this would be a bad thing. This is the kind of policy that would be awfully popular with everyone except the Civil Service. To that, I say good.

The thing is, this isn’t about transparency of government, it’s about public interest. If knowledge is power, knowledge must be transferred to the people of this country and removed from the public officials who are prone to corruption and misrepresentation of information – or cheating and lying, as some call it.