Tories pledge ‘radical transparency’

The Conservatives have pledged to publish online details of every item of central government and quango spending worth over £25,000 as part of a new technology strategy.

If the Tories won the general election, government contracts for goods and services worth over £25,000 would also be published in full, including details such as break clauses and penalty measures.

The Tories say that all procurement tender documents for contracts worth over £10,000 will also be put online to allow small and medium businesses to bid for contracts.

Other proposals include creating a more level playing field for small and medium businesses bidding for IT contracts, by breaking up big projects into smaller chunks.

The pledge extends to including details of contracts, under plans described as a "right to data" policy, part of a “radical transparency” agenda – that borrows heavily from policies on which President Obama campaigned in the US.

The Conservatives say they will publish online the Combined Online Information System (Coins), which contains the Treasury’s detailed analysis of departmental spending under thousands of category headings.

Other information promised is publication of a wide range of government datasets, “including the monthly online publication of local crime data on a street-by-street basis, education and health performance data”.

According to the Tories providing open access to government spending data would unleash innovative new applications and services that could lead to an estimated £6bn in additional value for the UK.

According to the new technology strategy a Conservative government would also: create a “government skunkworks” to develop low cost IT applications in-house and advise on the procurement of large projects.

The “radical transparency” agenda would also include publishing detailed information on the salaries of the country’s 35,000 most senior civil servants, together with the names and salaries of all central government and quango managers earning £150,000 a year or more.

The plans come in the Tories technology strategy, which includes a commitment to build a 100Mb high speed broadband, billed as the catalyst for creating up to 600,000 jobs.

George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, said the manifesto proposals presented "the most ambitious technology agenda ever proposed by a British political party".

He added: "We will make the British government the most technology friendly in the world, and meet our ambition that the next generation of Googles, Microsofts and Facebooks are British companies."