Does Gordon Brown have a digital trick or two to show President Obama? As change and greater digital access to information come slowly to the U.S. Government, it's more than worthwhile to delve into a newly-released beta report from the British Cabinet Office's Power of Information Task Force, which aims to reinvent the British people's interaction with their government.

Written by Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg. the report is wide-ranging and though-provoking - much of it came together on wiki - and its authors explicitly link their work to the theme of American change: "Early signs from the Obama administration in the USA suggest that digital innovators in the Administration are thinking along about re-use of data along the lines above. "

Go read British Cabinet Officer Tom Watson's speech on the "Power of information" and imagine a Member of Congress making a similar speech on how technology can radically reinvent government. Imagine one of our presidential candidates making it (even Barack Obama, who has done the most thinking on this topic.) You can't. But maybe, if we pay more attention to our cousins across the pond, soon someone will.

Five years ago, Watson was one of the first MPs to blog, and notes that even though it opened him up to daily abuse, "the blog broke down the walls between legislators and electors in a way that interested me. So I persevered." Now he says, "I believe in the power of mass collaboration.... I believe that the old hierarchies in which government policy is made are going to change for ever."