Government officials have been forced to extend a consultation on open standards after it emerged that the “facilitator” of a round table discussing the subject was also directly advising Microsoft on the consultation.
Computing consultant Andrew Hopkirk was engaged by the Cabinet Office on a pro bono basis as an independent facilitator for a Government Digital Service (GDS) event, part of a wider review into how open standards could help the Government cut costs of information sharing.
The Open Standards Consultation looked into how Government could ensure interoperability between software systems applications and data – an area of significant importance for Microsoft.
Although Hopkirk had disclosed a relationship with Microsoft’s Interoperability Executive Customer Council through his consulting work with the National Computing Centre, the GDS said he “did not declare the fact that he was advising Microsoft directly on the Open Standards Consultation”.
This could be seen as a clear conflict of interest and should have been declared by the relevant parties at that meeting
“This could be seen as a clear conflict of interest and should have been declared by the relevant parties at that meeting,” Liam Maxwell, deputy government CIO said in a statement.
“For this reason, any outcomes from the original roundtable discussion will be discounted in the consultation responses and we will rerun that session. Furthermore the consultation will now be extended for an additional month.”
Microsoft was still preparing its statement on the situation at the time of publishing, and we have yet to hear back from Hopkirk.
However, according to the GDS statement, Hopkirk said that he had “not been paid to specifically write their response to the Open Standards Consultation, but he is engaged to help them tease out the issues”.
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