If you look up the delicate issue of transparency on the Government’s Number 10 website you will read the following sentence: “We want to be the most open and transparent Government in the world.”

One method that the Government has chosen to achieve this transparency is the publication of every item of local and central government expenditure over £500. By its very nature, government spending will include tenders and contracts as well as actual payments and inter-government transfers of funds. The Government also committed to publishing certain information on salaries and contracts by January 2011.

However, now that this information has begun to be released, transparency is being blemished by one innocuous word – ‘redacted’. Redacted: the polite way of saying “We’re not saying”.

In fact, when you look across all published government spending and total-up the money spent where the information about what has been purchased or the identity of the supplier is redacted, the results are startling. Spend data held by public procurement experts BiP Solutions reveals that a jaw-dropping £593,842,742 has been redacted since 2008 and that £381,285,866 was redacted in 2010 alone – hardly a drop in the ocean. So why are there so many redactions when it comes to what central and local government is buying and from whom?

There are limited circumstances that result in legitimate redactions. Councils and government are prohibited from publishing data that conflicts with the Freedom of Information Act, the Data Protection Act and the Environmental Information Regulations. So redactions can be legitimate if they are used to avoid the disclosure of personal information; to withhold information for security reasons or for criminal investigations and; to avoid revealing third party confidential information, such as contracts with foster carers and child minders.

Commercially sensitive information falls under qualified exemptions and may or may not be redacted depending on whether it is in the public interest to publish the data. However, it is also stated by the Local Government Group, which published the Local transparency guidelines that councils follow regarding transparency, that in most cases it is in the public interest to make such information available.

So, even taking all of this into consideration, surely these rules can’t account for nearly £600 million worth of redactions, can they? Who exactly is this money being given to and what is it being spent on? Why aren’t we being told?

Councils make their own case-by-case assessments on redactions, looking at whether their contracts are either exempt from publication or require certain redactions, based on the criteria set out in the aforementioned guidelines. These specifically state that it is essential that councils assess the need for redactions on a case-by-case basis since each case is unique. A ‘one-size-fits all’ approach should not be adopted. Could it be that this rule has fallen by the wayside or is there something more sinister going on?

Also, Regulation 43 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2006 prohibits contracting authorities from disclosing information it has been forwarded by an economic operator (eg a company) when the economic operator has designated this information as confidential. So does that leave us with a scenario where somebody in the process can designate information as confidential and therefore to be redacted when it is in actual fact in the public interest? In any case, supplier names do not fall under any exemptions as they refer to a company and not an individual, so assuming the £600 million is not going entirely to individuals, why are company names being redacted?

With nearly £600 million spent where all information about the purpose and recipient of the spending has been redacted, it appears there are flaws and inconsistencies in the redaction process that severely undermine transparency. These flaws must be fixed soon because it is in the public’s interest to know where such a large sum is going. Somehow, being the most opaque government in the world doesn’t have the same ring as being the most transparent.