2000 data sets!
The UK Prime Minister has published a short video (3 minutes) from the Smarter Government seminar held at Downing Street on the afternoon of the 17th November 2009. The Prime Minister stated that 2000 datasets would be opened up very soon.
UK newspaper TimesOnline has published an article titled:
Put in your postcode, out comes the data - Imagine all that information gathered by government. Soon it will available – helpfully linked up, by Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt
The article states”
“Government data is a valuable resource that we have already paid for. We are not talking about personal data but data that tells us, for example, about the amount and type of traffic on our roads, where the accidents are, how much is spent on areas where these accidents occur. This is data that has already been collected and paid for by the taxpayer, and the Internet allows it to be distributed much more cheaply than before. Governments can unlock its value by simply letting people use it.”
A number of comments placed on the TimeOnline page allude to the other key problems that need to be address – in particular “Derived data”.
The UK Guardian newspaper Free Our Data Campaign has published a topic titled:
Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt on the benefits of open data
And ends with the comment:
“So there you have it: the free data concept is right there at the heart of government, with extra semantic web power from the person who invented it. That’s good. That’s very good.”
However respondents to the topic highlight many other datasets – perhaps they will be in the 2000 to be opened up in 2010!
The UK Guardian newspaper has published an article titled:
Ordnance Survey maps to go free online - PM to open access to 2,000 data sets in victory for Guardian's Free Our Data campaign
The article states:
“More broadly, it is thought that if the government relinquished control of other data sets it could save money.
The prime minister said that by April he hoped a consultation would be completed on the free provision of Ordnance Survey maps down to a scale of 1:10,000, (not the scale of a typical Landranger map set at 1:25,000).
The online maps would be free to all, including commercial users who, previously, had to acquire expensive and restrictive licences at £5,000 per usage, a fee many entrepreneurs felt was too high.
Local authorities also spend a lot of money getting access to Ordnance Survey. Swindon recently had to pay the OS £38,000 a year to use its addresses and geographical data, even though it had collected much of the data.”
- 191 reads
