- from Webcameron to TEDcameron
Last night Prospect‘s arts and books editor Tom Chatfield and I were lucky enough to be part of the 200 or so people packed into Bafta’s auditorium for the widely trailed “secret” Cameron TED talk. Three reflections.
1. People are missing the radicalism in his open contracts announcement. Cameron last night committed to publish the details of all government contracts. Not just IT contracts, which no one noticed they pledged to do in their IT paper before Christmas. ALL contracts. Every contract any contractor signs with a government department. Cleaners. Train operators. McKinsey being paid to write most of the Dhazi review. McKinsey running large chunks of Northern Rock. All of it. Here is the pledge:
A conservative government will publish all government contracts worth over £25,000 for goods and services in full, including all performance indicators, break clauses and penalty measures. This will
William
On transparency, you have to recall that each time for every one company that resents it (the contract winner) there is a group that welcomes it (all the losers). So on balance every company doing business with government hates it, but all the companies wanting to do business with government, or wanting to do more business with government would find advantage in it. Most companies are in both camps. It’ll settle down, and be a good thing.