Scotland can have open and accountable public services:
Scotland can have open and accountable public services:
Citizens at the heart of our public service organisations. Following the Public Sector Equality Duty model, Green MSPs will call for a Democracy and Public Participation Duty to apply to all public bodies and all other organisations performing public functions. This would require organisations fulfilling public functions to show that the public are consulted adequately when they take decisions and to demonstrate how their decisions will impact on Scottish citizens’ right to be involved with the design and delivery of their public services. Green MSPs will also fight for the public appointments procedure to be more open, accessible and transparent and for major public bodies like Creative Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority to reserve at least one place on their boards for ‘citizen governors’ representing the Scottish public.
Protecting ‘the Right to Know’. Whilst Scottish Greens support diversity in public service provision, the transferring of public functions to arms-length organisations (ALEOs) and private companies delivering services has undermined the Scottish public’s ‘right to know’ what is done in their name. Scottish Greens would push for a radical extension of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act to automatically apply to any organisation performing a public function. We would also campaign to end FOI exemption for the Royal Family.
Opening up public data. Not enough is being done to ensure that data which the public should have access to is freely available. Green MSPs will fight for all public authorities to routinely publish the public data they produce (with exemptions for personal information) in easily useable formats through a national online open public data gateway.