Linney takes seat in Labour digital den

Outsourcery boss invited to help produce a new digital Britain strategy for 2015

Outsourcery co-chief exec Piers Linney is one of eight business leaders named to sit on Labour's Digital Britain 2015 advisory board.

The Labour Party's shadow Cabinet Office minister Michael Dugher and Newcastle-upon-Tyne MP Chi Onwurah launched the party's review of the UK digital government plan today – a campaign aimed at critiquing current government policy ahead of the 2015 election.

Onwurah said in a statement released to press this morning that the review would set a digital agenda with clearer goals, which would improve services for citizens while retaining efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

"Under the guidance of our advisory board and with contributions from a wide range of stakeholders across the country, the review will deliver a framework for transforming digital government together with concrete policy proposals to make digital services work for the many," she said.

Onwurah said the government had no vision for digital Britain comparable to Labour's 2009 Digital Britain report. The party would take findings from 2009 and combine that with advice from the board and others to deliver a new review that outlines a clear route to the future.

"Four years on, the opportunities are different and we are not even beginning to reap the positive benefits of the way that technology can change our public services," she said.

"Rather than addressing these challenges ad hoc and reactively, we need a framework for the relationship between the people and their data, government and digital.

"Labour will be acting where this government has so comprehensively failed, delivering a new version of our Digital Britain report to be published before the next election."

Joining Outsourcery's Linney (pictured) will be:

Touchstone managing director Peter Ingram, previously chief technology officer at Ofcom and BT Retail;

Stephen King, partner at investment firm Omidyar Network; William Perrin, founder of community participation-focused website Talk About Local;

Cho Oliver, director of software consultancy Liquid Steel and previously CIO of European oil trading at BP;

Vicki Shotbolt, founder and chief executive of parent information group The Parent Zone;

Jeni Tennison, technical director of the Open Data Institute, a group campaigning for data to be available for anyone to use; and

Graham Walker, chief exec of digital skills alliance Go On UK.