Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND DEMOCRACY
Government information services
It is a popular misconception that knowledge about social and economic relationships
comes mostly from academic researchers working in university departments
who conduct fieldwork and then have the results published. In fact the overwhelming
mass of what we know about ourselves as a society – about the family,
about schooling, work and leisure – comes from the government information
services (Bulmer, 1980). To be sure, most of this reaches us through secondary
sources like the press and television (and even on occasion by scholarly writings
that rely on official statistics), but this in no way negates the point that such
information originates from government agencies.
This is because government is the only institution capable of systematically
and routinely gathering and processing information on everything from patterns
of divorce to infant morbidity, from occupational shifts to criminological trends;
because this daunting task requires huge sums of money and, as important, the
legitimacy of constitutional government. Consider, for example, the detailed and
intimate information which becomes available from the census every ten years
and one appreciates the point easily enough. Reflect further on government being
the only institution capable of gathering systematic information on such sensitive
issues as immigration patterns, or the distribution of income and wealth, and then
its importance as an informational resource becomes especially clear.
Recognising government as the major agency providing us with information
by which we may know ourselves – how we are changing, how health patterns
are distributed, how families are structured, how households are equipped – it
follows that there is a special need for this information to be reliable. If government
policies are going to be effective, still more if citizens are going to be able
to evaluate and meaningfully participate in the life of their society, then they must
have trust in the information that is fundamental to these processes. Imagine if
one could not rely on the accuracy of demographic statistics that tell us of life
expectancies, birth rates and regional variations within them; if we could not
believe data made available on educational trends such as literacy attainments,
different pass rates at GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education)
between schools and areas, and classroom sizes; if we could not trust in the
integrity of statistics on unemployment rates.
Government information services fit readily into the notion of a public sphere
in that reasoned discussion, still less rational debate, is unimaginable without a
reliable knowledge base. 5 It is, indeed, hard to conceive of meaningful politics,
of a politics that moves beyond exchange of slogans, in which sound statistical
information is absent. For this and other reasons, throughout the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, there developed the view that accurate and systematically
gathered information should be produced by government as a preliminary to
political deliberation of whatever complexion. As former Conservative Cabinet
minister Sir Ian Gilmour said, the ethos and practice has long been that the
‘integrity of statistics should be above politics’ (cited in Lawson, 1989).
Alongside, and an essential component, has been an ethic of public service
among the government statisticians who gather and make available this
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