Unfortunately, the amount of difference this kind of thing will make is minimal. For services supplied to Government, the decision making for anything non-trivial is made at appointment after tender: and these principles aren't embedded into procurement.
It also won't apply to the various Quangos, whose spending is publicly funded but nowhere near as transparent as direct Government spending.
There have been a similar set of open source principles in Government for something like six years now. They made practically no difference.
There's definitely been a lot of good thinking and guidance around the government for a long time.
The real difference here is that the Government Digital Service is empowered to actually build some of this in-house and so the principles are emerging from actual practice. We're also able to get involved in some procurement processes very early on and work with the appointed suppliers. We're also hoping that other people putting them into practice will come back with feedback we can incorporate to make them better and illustrate them more fully.
Getting these principles thoroughly embedded is going to be a long journey, but they're a far cry from being just another good practice document that'll be ignored.
And you might add make sure any charging method is fit for purpose - I am trying to use Companies House data and they are insisting that we set up a direct debit.
HINT! FTSE 100 and FT Global 500 company's do not set up direct debits when they buy services it has to go though our accounts department in the normal way.
> Unfortunately, the amount of difference this kind of thing will make is minimal.
Not true at all.
gov.uk is up and live right now in beta, and I have already used it to look up things about my taxes, some legal stuff for a friend, and visa-related things for a foreign acquaintance. It took no time at all; I put in the general search term, and the top hit is a simple, beautfiul page containing exactly the information I'm looking for, with links to all the resources I might need. Gov.uk is amazingly good. I am a guy who enjoys finding fault, especially in technological matters, but I would not change a thing about the current gov.uk site (except get rid of the beta warning).
So no, these principles are not binding for anyone else, but they're already making a difference. I hope that when people see how good government sites can be, they'll start demanding improvement. Either that or gov.uk will eat everyone else's lunch because people prefer to use it.
It also won't apply to the various Quangos, whose spending is publicly funded but nowhere near as transparent as direct Government spending.
There have been a similar set of open source principles in Government for something like six years now. They made practically no difference.