Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Government Spends Our Money But Not Allowed to Tell Us How Much?
How can it be justified that the Government can use our (the taxpayers money) and not tell us how much and on what?
We'll just have to take Becta's word for it that "its licensing agreement with Microsoft establishes significant savings for schools across the UK", as it's confidential how much has been paid.
(From Kable) The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) has signed a secrecy clause with Microsoft which prevents it from disclosing the prices schools are paying for software licences.What possible reason could there be for keeping it a secret how much they are paying Micro$oft? And why is this exempt from "open government"? What's to stop the Government buying, say, a new nuclear defence system, and then saying "we can't tell you how much it cost due to a non-disclosure agreement."
We'll just have to take Becta's word for it that "its licensing agreement with Microsoft establishes significant savings for schools across the UK", as it's confidential how much has been paid.
