Loss of SOH?
Perhaps Jimbo is only doing it for the publicity or is blissfully unaware of the wisdom of Sir Arnold in 'Yes Minister' ('Open Government') -
"My dear boy, it is a contradiction in terms: you can be open or you can have government.
In what may prove to be a political gift to Labour, Wikipedia's spiritual leader Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales has been hired to advise Whitehall on openness and transparency. Rohan Silva, the No 10 advisor whose brainchild is rebranding the leisure startups of Shoreditch as "TechCity", announced the news at the SXSW conference and …
"We want to be the most open and transparent government in the world. Already, we've published a huge amount of new information about the inner workings of government, and there's a lot more still to come" - David Cameron.
Publishing the NHS risk register would be a good start, wouldn't it Dave?
Presumably Branson just did the exact opposite of whatever Laker suggested?
I flew once on Laker 2.0 (Laker Airways, vs the 80's 'SkyTrain') from Miami to LGW - flight was delayed from 11am to 'indefinitely', finally got a call at 3:30 am the next morning, got down to the terminal and both Laker and Laker jr were there apologising to the 30 or so unlucky sods who couldn't get on a BA flight.
They went titsup 3 weeks later...
If you have something you don't want people to see the traditional approach has been to try and hide it. Conceal it behind a sign that says "Nothing to see here", or disguise it as something else.
Alternatively, you can conceal something by making it invisible. When something's invisible you can't see it - you see right through it. It's TRANSPARENT.
So it's not a huge jump to go from using a disguise or concealment to prevent people from seeing what you're up to, to stopping them from seeing it by making it transparent and therefore invisible to view - or scrutiny. Should we therefore be worried that the real motivation behind a government "transparency" initiative is not to reveal to the general public how government works - but to stop us from seeing those workings by making them invisible, yet still present?
This is a classic grubberment misinformation move, I expect the grubberment to also appoint the following advisors:-
jeffrey archer will be hired to advise on ethics in politics
bernie madoff will be hired to advise on financial investment
fred goodwin will be hired to advise on banking policy
maggie thatcher will be hired to advise on the coal industry.
I normally laugh at these consultants and Cameron but I'm actually quite open to this-I've seen him speak (at my old university) and he really is a darn engaging person who's come to wikipedia from a very strong set of values-OK, he may have made his money hosting porn, but he really appreciates the value of knowledge and information, and you can tell how he persuaded people to work with him to put wikipedia together (even if it didn't last forever in the case of Sanger...). I can really see him having an effect in making civil servants see a major part of their work as being making sure the public understands what they're doing.