Public Sector Information
Open data: free to use and republish
Open data is the idea that some data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or similar. The philosophy behind it is long established, but the term “open data” itself was more recently coined. It appeared for the first time in 1995, in a […]
Crown Commons
With the launch of the data.gov.uk beta website – providing access to over 2,500 central government datasets – comes a new licensing model for government information which it is intended will be launched government-wide by the end of May 2010 to replace the existing “Click-Use” licence. The new licence is interoperable with the Creative Commons […]
Unlocking the power of information
As regular readers will know, one of my pet subjects is unlocking the power of public sector information, and I’ve actively campaigned for it as it relates to legal information. The ball is now really rolling on this with the introduction of two new services from government: From OPSI – Public Sector Information Unlocking Service […]
Consultations aggregator
Just came across Tell Them What You Think, an extremely handy site which aggregates government consultations and enables you to: search all current government consultations for words and phrases browse all latest consultations by department set up alerts via email or RSS to tell you when consultations of interest are published There are several departments […]
They’re working for us (dot org)
The folks at mySociety are really moving on Society 2.0. mySociety is a charity which builds natty Web 2.0 sites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives. It also aims to teach the public and voluntary sectors, through demonstration, how to most efficiently use the internet to […]
Our data should be free
A long-awaited private study by Cambridge University into the pricing of public sector information (PSI) by trading funds (Ordnance Survey, Met Office, Companies House, Land Registry et al) was published on the side with the 2008 Budget Report. The study was commissioned by BERR following the OFT’s market study into the commercial use of PSI […]
Free access is not open access
I highlight again a single point from para 87 of the Power of Information review from my acronymically-entitled previous post PSI4U: It is relatively easy to suggest changes that would give citizens and organisations better access to information held by government. These include … republishing information in open standards or as web services. Let’s look […]
PSI4U
The Power of Information review (see previous post) looked at how non-personal public sector information can be re-used and reinvigorated outside of government to generate public and economic value. Responding to one of its recommendations, OPSI have set up a discussion forum to to gather and assess PSI re-use requests. At issue is not what […]
Power to the people (2)
The Cabinet Office has responded positively to the independent report it commissioned on the future of government services – The Power of Information (see previous post) – saying that the Government will engage in partnership with user-led online communities, not attempt to replicate them: The Government should work in partnership with the best of citizens’ […]
Gov 2.0 – power to the people
Around the world, the first phase of Government use of the internet is coming to an end with public services and information largely online. We are now at the start of a new era, where Government starts to learn how to support citizens’ own ways of making, finding and re-using information online. So says Tom […]
Beefy and Lamby anyone?
Comment on the Government’s proposals to close 550 plus government websites has provoked a range of comment from “about time too” to “a bit of a sick joke“, with numerous geeks chipping in that this is all unnecessary because [Web 2.0 reason here]. One needs to dig a little deeper than the government press release […]
Developments in legal information
First published January 2007 in the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers. Here are some of the key developments in the field of (free) legal information provision in 2006 and some predictions for 2007. The Statute Law Database After a 10-year wait, the Statute Law Database was finally released to the public just in time for Christmas. […]
Monopoly of PSI costs the UK £500 million in lost opportunities
OFT Press Release 07/12/2006: The OFT’s market study into the commercial use of public information has found that more competition in public sector information could benefit the UK economy by around 1billion a year. Examples of public sector information include weather observations collected by the Met Office, records held by The National Archives used by […]
Free public sector data? – someone has to pay
Society Guardian on howSusskind has approvedthe Guardian’s Free Our Data Campaign: The British government owns one of the world’s most valuable collections of intellectual property. Government policy on what it should do with this information is muddled. On one hand, it encourages free access, for example to historic census returns. On the other hand, agencies […]
OPSI discussion forum
OPSI has added a Discussion Forums area to its website. The first to be set up is “Website Help” which is for discussion of problems, issues and tips on using the OPSI website. They may regret this! Half of the posts so far are from members of the public seeking advice about specific statutory provisions: […]
