Shadow Chancellor George Osborne yesterday addressed an audience at the RSA and outlined a vision of 'open source government'. Ian Delaney reports.

Osborne said that there was a need for a 'new political settlement' apt for the digital age, based upon three pillars:

Equality of Access to Information: The rise of internet search has empowered individuals in terms of access to information. Any citizen can now find whatever they want as fast as any government clerk. However, this open access does not extend to information held by the government and theoretically open to every citizen. In the US, citizens are able to 'google' their tax records. Osborne believes a similar system should be put in place in the UK, and his treasury team has put a bill to this effect to the House of Lords, though he is not sanguine about the likelihood of its success. "What's needed in government is as much a cultural shift as a technological change," said Osborne. "A shift to a culture that welcomes criticism and comment - then reacts to it."

New Social Networks: MySpace has 125mn members and continues to grow by a quarter of a million each week. Political organisation can and should do more to harness the energy and enthusiasm created by these networks to re-engage those who feel uninterested in current politics. In the US, again, the forthcoming presidential elections will be fought for online as much as through any existing media. Candidate Barack Obama has even formed his own social network called MyBarackObama.com. When 500,000 americans took to the streets of San Francisco last year to protest against the ill-treatment of immigrants, the march was organised through social networks, reaching those who are "exactly the type of people that conventional politics usually fails to reach".

Open Source: The movement behind free, communally created software products and sites might also be applied to politics. "Open source politics means rejecting the old monolithic top-down approach to decision-making." An open source government would be open to the expertise and experience of every citizen. Osborne recounted the story of Gold Corp. which opened up its geological information to the public, inviting them to try to work out where new gold deposits might be found in return for a share of revenue from correct predictions. Thanks to the input from mathematicians, geologists, geographers and prospectors, the company was able to mine $3bn worth of new deposits. Private companies such as Procter & Gamble and the RSA itself are also using wikis and social networks to solve their problems and share knowledge.

Audience reaction to the speech varied. Veteran journalist Bryan Appleyard perhaps voiced the most trenchant criticisms. He regarded technology evangelists with suspicion since it is a tool that can be used for good or bad. He was also anxious about what he described as 'hyperdemocracy' - allowing the public instant voting on policy decisions was, he felt, a worrying tendency that could lead to the sanctioning of knee-jerk reactions. The requirement for deliberation before creating and passing policy was vital, he stated.

A full transcript of the speech is available here. A podcast is available from the RSA site.