1.3: Open Data and Information

Radically opening up data and public information to promote transparent and effective government

Other Information:

Commitments: government’s public data principles -- ‘Public data’ are ‘government-held non-personal data that are collected or generated in the course of public service delivery’. Our public data principles state that: • Public data will be published in reusable, machinereadable form • Public data will be available and easy to find through a single easy to use online access point (www.data.gov.uk) • Public data will be published using open standards and following the recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium • Any ‘raw’ dataset will be represented in linked data form • More public data will be released under an open licence which enables free reuse, including commercial reuse • Data underlying the Government’s own websites will be published in reusable form for others to use • Personal, classified, commercially sensitive and third-party data will continue to be protected. Actions: opening up data and promoting transparency -- We will release valuable public datasets and make them free for reuse. this will include: • Releasing health data such as the NHS Choices data • Consulting on making Ordnance Survey mapping and postcode datasets available for free reuse from April 2010 • Increasing access to and reuse of public transport data29 including the national Public transport Access node database, with information available to the development community by April 2010, providing live incident warnings and traffic camera images to googleMaps™ and increasing the number of gPs-enabled buses to cover 80% of journeys by 2015 • Opening Met Office Public Weather Service data to include: releasing significant underlying data for weather forecasts for free download and reuse by April 2010, and working to further expand the release of weather data, while recognising all public safety considerations; releasing a free iPhone application to access weather data by April 2010; releasing a widget that enables other websites to deploy Met office supplied weather information by April 2010; and making available more information on Met office scientists, their work and scientific papers, free of charge • Publishing, by spring 2010, details of how the fiscal stimulus announced in the Pre-Budget Report 2008 has been spent, disaggregated to local level • Launching a public consultation early in 2010 to seek views on how we could publish further financial data so that it is user-friendly and accessible, with a view to putting a live system in place by summer 2010 • Integrating ONS data with www.data.gov.uk from January 2010. We will make government data accessible through a single access point at www.data.gov.uk, which will go live from January 2010 with over 1,100 central government datasets free for reuse, ranging from lists of schools to traffic volumes on the trunk road network. We will encourage local government to release local public data and make it free for reuse, and establish an open-platform local data exchange. Professor nigel shadbolt will lead a local public data panel to ensure that data are linked effectively across local authorities, the local government Association, government departments and agencies. We will create new ways for the citizen to interact with public services and public policy. By December 2010 we will extend user comment capabilities on nhs Choices to cover all health services, and we will publish key consultations online via the Directgov consultation index, with tools for interactive dialogue, enabling citizens to comment on draft legislative bills. We will make a number of important technical improvements to public data: we will aim for the majority of government-published information to be reusable, linked data by June 2011; and we will establish a common licence to reuse data which is interoperable with the internationally recognised Creative Commons model.

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