The head of Britain’s Public Service (PS) Sir Jeremy Heywood has called for a ‘transparency revolution’ in Whitehall to make the UK Government the “most open” in the world.

As Secretary to Cabinet, Sir Jeremy admitted that in the past civil servants had been far better at collecting information on schools, hospitals and crime than they had been at releasing it to the public.

He promised that in the future however, total transparency across Whitehall would become the norm “giving people the information they need to make choices about their lives” and highlighting “areas where the public sector is underperforming”.

His commitment to openness was likely to mean that within a few years the public would be able to assess from one single source the performance of school pupils by class, crime levels on every street and the success rate for every single operation in local hospitals.

The information would also be available in “raw” format so businesses would be able to make use of it to develop smartphone applications while academics would be able to analyse it for trends.

“Transparency makes for better Government,” Sir Jeremy said.

“The data we are releasing will provide a powerful incentive for improvement,” he said.

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