The Conservative party have published their technology manifesto, which they hope will win over those in and with an interest in the technology industries ahead of the upcoming general election. The manifesto includes commitments to:

  • Publish online the names and salaries of all central government and Quango managers earning over £150,000 per year, and in addition we will put online the salaries of the 35,000 most senior civil servants.
  • Publish online every item of central government and Quango spending over £25,000, and every item of local government spending over £500 — including every contract in full.
  • Create a level playing field for open source IT in government procurement and open up government IT contracts to SMEs by breaking up large IT projects into smaller components – currently just nine IT companies received 60% of public sector IT spending
    Introduce a presumption against government IT contracts worth over £100 million.
  • Publish online all IT tender documents and IT procurement contracts to enable the public to root out wasteful spending and to help more small businesses bid for government contracts.
  • Impose an immediate moratorium on planned IT procurement projects in order to evaluate upcoming projects and ensure that small businesses and open source IT providers are not locked out of the bidding process
  • Strengthen the role of the government CIO, which will have the power to implement IT open standards, open data and other IT policies across government departments
  • Create a powerful new ‘Right to Government Data’, enabling the public to request — and receive — government datasets
  • Introduce a Public Reading Stage for all legislation to harness the wisdom of crowds to improve bills and spot potential problems before legislation is implemented
  • Begin work immediately to create a high speed rail line connecting London and Heathrow with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, with construction to begin in 2015.
  • Deliver superfast 100 mbps broadband across most of the population by opening up BT’s network infrastructure, easing planning rules and boosting competition. [If the market does not deliver superfast broadband in certain areas, we will consider using the proportion of the licence fee dedicated to digital switchover to finance superfast broadband roll out under the new BBC licence fee settlement, starting in 2012. This amount would be leveraged to maximise the investment made, either by making it available as loans or on a matched funding basis.]

    • On the topic de jour - digital piracy - the party are strangely vague merely stating “We recognise the need to tackle digital piracy and make it possible for people to buy and sell digital intellectual property online. However it is vital that any anti-piracy measures promote new business models rather than holding innovation back.”

    Nothing really new in the manifesto, but it does pull together a number of promises made in other statements. Public Reading Stage for all legislation is certainly an interesting one though. It sounds like they envisage a kind of wiki clause by clause based system to allow feedback and comments on legislation - which once the abuse is weeded out, might at least be interesting, even if any comments not made by vested and industry interests are ultimately ignored.

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