The Government’s report into "Digital Britain" – an 81 page pdf – was launched last week.

As an interim report, it would be unreasonable to expect it to have come to conclusions across the board – but time after time, rather than offering up suggestions or ranges of options for further consideration before decision, the report basically says, "we’ve thought about it, and decide someone needs to think about it some more".

Mix in the love of plans, strategies and new groups and it is the blend of bureaucracy and indecision that often frustrates even the keenest fans of the New Labour governing style.

And that style has the report’s foreword, from minister Stephen Carter, in a suffocating grip. As the foreword says, "the average British adult spends almost half of all their waking hours using the services of the communications sector or browsing, watching or listening to the audio-visual content it distributes", and yet how does the foreword start? By talking about digital’s role in Britain’s economy.

The health and success of this sector is discussed in terms of the economic benefits it brings. That is certainly important – particularly at times like these – but when we are spending nearly half our waking hours consuming to some degree or other its output, then it is also a sector that is about far more than just economics. Digital life should be about more than a matter of pounds and pence, economic statistics and econometric models.

This narrow-minded focus on the economic stands in ironic contrast to how much of digital life is driven by non-economic factors – as with the large volume of content make available voluntarily and for free. Imagine a digital world where the only contributors were those with a direct economic motive for contributing. It would be only a shadow of the vibrant digital culture that we have.

Moreover, understanding how to foster and grow that culture is necessary in order to in turn reap the economic benefits. Yet on so many of these issues the report is silent. A few quick examples. A spread of creative commons licensing could unlock much creativity. Instead, we have no imagination on the copyright front in the report, not only in its own copyright status but in the lack of good plans for changing crown copyright or the copyright culture more generally.

Not even a modest step in the direction of copying the US Federal Government’s approach to copyright where, for example, it is standard for photographs taken by the US military and then available free for all to use. If the taxpayer is paying for the photo then (security considerations excepted) why shouldn’t the taxpayer be able to use it?

Likewise on libel. It can have a chilling effect on blogging, and there is plenty to debate changing – such as the way libel law discriminates against those who moderate comments, encouraging therefore the lowest common denominator style of blogs where anything goes in the comments.

Or the ease with which someone can threaten libel action, run up legal costs and then try to pressure you into paying them even if you are willing to say sorry and issue a correction long before matters get to court.

As with copyright, we are stuck with a set of rules, procedures and habits that so often hinder the flourishing of creativity in a digital world – but which the report does not adequately address. Similarly crucial to that flourishing are the technology start-ups, but again their needs for care and attention are largely omitted.

The report does talk about some important issues around the digital skeleton of the country – the structure of our broadcasting services, uses of spectrums and availability of broadband. But it is rather like producing a report on the wine industry that is largely about the supply of glass bottles and has very little about the product that goes in those bottles.

Although there is a chapter titled "Digital Content" all its meat is really just about online piracy and public sector broadcasting content – important, but again a rather narrow and traditional view of what matters.

Even on the digital skeleton, the report is very timid in its statements. As my colleague Don Foster put it in Parliament when the report was published:

"Perhaps the biggest disappointment relates to the plans for rolling out universal high-speed broadband. The Government promised that they would bring forward capital investment to help us out of the recession. This is one of the key areas in which that could be done. If done properly, 600,000 new jobs could be created in this country, but what have we got? We have some vague commitment to a universal 2 megabits per second provision. As the hon. Gentleman said, average speeds are already 3.6 megabits per second, so why is there such little ambition and such a low target?"

In the end what should be a study in supporting the exuberant range of new opportunities is one smothered in a welter of bureaucracy and timidity. A open, welcoming digital world this ain’t.

This article first appeared on Liberal Conspiracy.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2009

What does an innocent person have to fear?" That’s one of the most common arguments rolled out time and time again to justify chipping away at our freedoms. If you’re innocent why should you be worried if the government can do X, knows Y or stops Z?

The counter-arguments tend to be a mix of principle and pragmatism. Principled arguments around issues such as rights that we have as humans and the restrictions there should be on what governments can do. Pragmatic arguments such as the costs (e.g. spend money on ID cards or on police?), practicalities (e.g. what odds that the ID cards database will really work?) and side-effects (e.g. the increasing number of errors as the DNA database grows). Or in other words – put the resources into catching the guilty rather than hassling the innocent.

But further than that – and I think this is sometimes neglected by those arguing to protect our liberties – we all benefit from the liberties that any one of us has. Most obviously, if a journalist is free to investigate government wrong-doings – we all benefit from that. But this benefit comes in more subtle ways too, as the tragic death of Baby P in Haringey has exposed.

Whatever else one case say about Haringey, it hasn’t been short of whistleblowers with credible, relevant concerns about the way children were being looked after by Children’s Services and the health authorities. Yet they have repeatedly been injuncted and gagged, prevented from speaking out and pressured into silence. Even now, many people are not willing to go on the record to get their concerns into the light (one of the reasons why I believe we should have a public inquiry – so such people can be given the assurance that speaking out will result in being listened to).

We know, though, that inspectors were misled – fed information that suggested all was well, when it wasn’t; that the first Serious Case Review into Baby P’s death was carried out badly and wrongly airbrushed out the serious blunders that the authorities had made; and that concerns raised about the quality of services were repeatedly rebuffed with the answer that all was well and in hand.

This could only happen because of our culture of accepting tight restrictions on freedom of speech in employment situations. It’s the normal thing that if a member of staff is seriously unhappy with how a department is being run, their contract stops them speaking out. Often they will get paid off and required to sign a promise of secrecy. And if they wish to stand their ground and fight? There’s precious little protection for whistleblowers and a hugely lopsided legal system that benefits those with the big pockets (the state) against those without (the employee).

This is not though an issue only about the individual rights of those whistleblowers. It’s about how public services are kept on track and public servants held to account. Anyone who uses those services may be the victim of the service blunders that flow from a whistleblower being silenced.

The idea that if you work for an organisation you should keep quiet spreads far and wide through society – it’s even the normal state of affairs for members of sports teams, who face sanctions if they criticise in public the sport’s authorities. But imagine the outrage there would be if a rule were introduced that MPs are not allowed to criticise the Parliamentary authorities in public.

So when people talk about civil liberties – and cherish, rightly, the many freedoms we do have – let us not forget that freedom of speech is still a hotly contested area, where far too often corporate and bureaucratic self-preservation wins out.

This article first appeared on Liberal Democrat Voice.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2009