Public Sector Information Strategy in the UK data.gov.uk John Sheridan 4 February 2010

“Everything is deeply intertwingled” Economic growth & knowledge Knowledge & codification Codification & information Information & sharing Sharing & innovation Innovation & the web The web & networks Networks & public policy Public policy & society Society & economic growth …

“Everything is deeply intertwingled” Economic growth & knowledge Knowledge & codification Codification & information Information & sharing Sharing & innovation Innovation & the web The web & networks Networks & public policy Public policy & society Society & economic growth … } Information policy and the web

Be careful what you wish for…

datavisualisepresentdiscuss “No more boring data”

Public Data and PSI Re-use There is a global movement to publishing government data – initiatives in the United States, Australia, New Zealand as well as here in Europe Some friendly competition is helping us all do better – The Whitehouse said: “You gave us the Beatles, we gave you data.gov” Public Data: “government held non-personal data that are collected or generated in the course of public service delivery” Public Data is PSI!

Example By Jeni Tennison ( under a Creative Commons licencehttp://

Policy Challenges Domestic PSI Re-use agenda driven by parallel policy objectives  Transparency and democratic accountability  Reform of public services  Economic development Traction has come by combining all three themes Close connections between policy, technology and delivery Alignment with INSPIRE Directive requirements Not just central government, but local too New context: the hyperlocal movement New initiatives: Local Data Panel

Public Data Principles Public Data will be published in reusable, machine-readable form Public data will be available an easy to find through a single,easy to use online access point ( 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 re-use Data underpinning 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

Charging, Licensing and Regulation Charging for PSI Re-use  Default is marginal cost for Crown copyright information  Exceptions are now tested  Information trading is regulated under the Information Fair Trader Scheme (IFTS) and the Re-use of PSI Regulations UK Government is currently consulting on mapping information. Commitment to launch “Ordnance Survey Free” from 1 st April 2010 New non-transaction licence for data.gov.uk; working on a replacement to Click-Use this year New Licence is “interoperable” with Creative Commons Attribution v3.0 Licence

Technology challenges The needs of data publishers (government departments) and data re-users are different Distributed approach to data publishing, single point of access for developers Our objective for data publishers is to make the process of publishing data as easy as possible Our objective for data consumers is to maximise re-use by supporting a broad church of developers (Raw data for download, APIs, Linked Data)

W3C plug goes here…

Linked Data The best way to publish government information on the web Publishing data in a very web centric way Learning how to make it easy to publish Linked Data  Tools  Versioning  Provenance  Linking to third party concepts  Developing technology policy  Devising approaches for statistics and location Learning how to make it easy to consume  Commoditising the process of creating APIs on top of Linked Data

The chasm

Links with flavour distributed under a Creative Commons License

distributed under a Creative Commons License Links with flavour

URI Sets for the Public Sector

Examples School Administrative District Legislation

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Summary Global movement of governments publishing data The “data” agenda is logical next step for PSI Re-use policy Addressing policy, technology and culture Needs of data publishers and data consumers are different Linked Data approaches have significant benefits The UK Government creating “the pillars” of a Web of Linked Government Data, making the process of publishing data as easy as possible It is important we work together in Europe, learning from each other, building the evidence base for further policy development

Thank you