Data.gov.uk
Encyclopedia
data.gov.uk is a UK Government project to open up almost all non-personal data acquired for official purposes for free re-use. Sir Tim Berners-Lee
and Professor Nigel Shadbolt
are the two key figures behind the project.
.
standards, to allow people to provide data to data.gov.uk in a way that allows for flexible and easy reuse. As of April 2010 the following UK Government departments and agencies have provided data sets to data.gov.uk: BusinessLink, the Cabinet Office, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
, the Department for Children, Schools and Families
, the Department for Communities and Local Government
, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport
, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
, the Department for International Development
, the Department for Transport
, the Department for Work and Pensions
, the Department of Energy and Climate Change
, the Department of Health, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
, the Home Office
, Her Majesty's Treasury, Lichfield District Council
, the Ministry of Defence
, the Ministry of Justice, the Northern Ireland Office
, the Ordnance Survey
, and the Society of Information Technology Management.
data was one of the key data sets that Berners-Lee and Professor Shadbolt wanted to see opened up as part of the project. Ordnance Survey data was included in data.gov.uk on 1 April 2010 and provides information on geographical locations. According to Professor Shadbolt "will make a real difference to the way that people make sense of the information".
, known as COINS, operates as the UK Government's central accounting system. COINS data details the spent of all government department and their major spending programmes. The 4.3GB of COIN data included 3.2 million items for the financial year 2009/10 and was released using BitTorrent. The UK government has stated that data for the current financial year (2010/11) will be released in June 2011. HM Treasury also cited "the impenetrability of the information to a lay user" and "the potential significant cost and difficulty of rebutting misunderstandings" as reasons for not releasing the data. On the 15 of June the UK Government published the COINS data for the financial years 2008/09, 2007/08, 2006/07 and 2005/06 on data.gov.uk. Within 24 hours of the release the data was also made available through the RA.Pid Gateway webportal run by Rosslyn Analytics.
The HM Treasury
had refused previous requests to release COIN data on the grounds that it contained FOI-exempt data on future defence and security services spending. HM Treasury also cited "the impenetrability of the information to a lay user" and "the potential significant cost and difficulty of rebutting misunderstandings" as reasons for not releasing the data.
All data included in data.gov.uk is covered either by Crown Copyright
, the Crown Database Right or have been licensed to the Crown. In turn, all data available on data.gov.uk is available under a worldwide, royalty
-free, perpetual
, non-exclusive license which permits use of the data under the following conditions: the copyright and the source of the data should be acknowledged by including an attribution statement specified by data.gov.uk, which is name of data provider' data © Crown copyright and database right. the inclusion of the same acknowledgement is required in sub-licensing of the data, and further sub-licenses should require the same. The data should not be used in a way that suggests that the data provider endorses the use of the data. And the data or its source should not be misrepresented.
The Crown copyright
license permits anyone to copy, distribute and transmit the data, adapt the data, exploit the data commercially, whether by sublicensing it, combining it with other data or by including it in products and applications. The terms of the license are aligned with any Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
. Hence data.gov.uk data can be mixed with information licensed under Creative Commons licenses to create derivative work, which can be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. When users submit information to data.gov.uk it is assumed that grant the Crown a non-exclusive, irrevocable right to use and pass on all public information submitted, such as descriptions of ideas and screenshots of apps, as well as the right to re-use allow the re-use of that information. All content on the site is placed under the same license terms as the data, though user ideas and application remain their own.
The Crown copyright
license does not affect fair dealing
or fair use
rights, or any other exceptions and limitations to copyright
or database rights
. The data is licensed "as is" and data.gov.uk does not accept liabilities in relation to the data or provide warranties. Neither does data.gov.uk guarantee the continued supply of the data.
and Professor Nigel Shadbolt
are the two key figures behind the project. According to Berners-Lee "Government data is something we have already spent the money on... and when it is sitting there on a disk in somebody's office it is wasted." Professor Shadbolt told the BBC that "A lot of this is about changing assumptions" and that if the data "can be published under an FOI (Freedom of Information
) request why not publish it online?". In April 2010, commenting on the opening up of Ordnance Survey
data Berners-Lee said that: "The changes signal a wider cultural change in Government based on an assumption that information should be in the public domain unless there is a good reason not to - not the other way around." He went on to say "Greater openness, accountability and transparency in Government will give people greater choice and make it easier for individuals to get more directly involved in issues that matter to them."
, mayor of London, opened an online data warehouse containing more than 200 data sets from London city authorities
.
, which opens up data from various departments, including the US Defence Department and NASA
.
The European Public Sector Information (PSI) Platform maintains a list of PSI data catalogues provided by governments and providing direct access to data.
Tim Berners-Lee
Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, , also known as "TimBL", is a British computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web...
and Professor Nigel Shadbolt
Nigel Shadbolt
Nigel Richard Shadbolt FREng CEng CITP FBCS is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.Nigel Shadbolt was born in London. He studied for an undergraduate degree in philosophy and psychology at Newcastle University. His PhD was from the Department of...
are the two key figures behind the project.
Beta version and launch
The beta version of data.gov.uk has been online since the 30 September 2009 and by January 2010 more than 2,400 developers had registered to test the site, provide feedback and start experimenting with the data. When the project was officially launched in January 2010 it contained 2,500 data sets and developers had already built a site that showed the location of schools according to the rating assigned to them by education watchdog OfstedOfsted
The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills is the non-ministerial government department of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools In England ....
.
Data available
data.gov.uk contains more than 2,500 data sets from various UK Government departments. All data is non-personal and provided in a format that allows it to be reused. data.gov.uk intends to increase the use of Linked DataLinked Data
In computing, linked data describes a method of publishing structured data so that it can be interlinked and become more useful. It builds upon standard Web technologies such as HTTP and URIs, but rather than using them to serve web pages for human readers, it extends them to share information in a...
standards, to allow people to provide data to data.gov.uk in a way that allows for flexible and easy reuse. As of April 2010 the following UK Government departments and agencies have provided data sets to data.gov.uk: BusinessLink, the Cabinet Office, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is a ministerial department of the United Kingdom Government created on 5 June 2009 by the merger of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform .-Ministers:The BIS...
, the Department for Children, Schools and Families
Department for Children, Schools and Families
The Department for Children, Schools and Families was a department of the UK government, between 2007 and 2010, responsible for issues affecting people in England up to the age of 19, including child protection and education...
, the Department for Communities and Local Government
Department for Communities and Local Government
The Department for Communities and Local Government is the UK Government department for communities and local government in England. It was established in May 2006 and is the successor to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, established in 2001...
, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is a department of the United Kingdom government, with responsibility for culture and sport in England, and some aspects of the media throughout the whole UK, such as broadcasting and internet....
, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is the government department responsible for environmental protection, food production and standards, agriculture, fisheries and rural communities in the United Kingdom...
, the Department for International Development
Department for International Development
The Department For International Development is a United Kingdom government department with a Cabinet Minister in charge. It was separated from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1997. The goal of the department is "to promote sustainable development and eliminate world poverty". The current...
, the Department for Transport
Department for Transport
In the United Kingdom, the Department for Transport is the government department responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which are not devolved...
, the Department for Work and Pensions
Department for Work and Pensions
The Department for Work and Pensions is the largest government department in the United Kingdom, created on June 8, 2001 from the merger of the employment part of the Department for Education and Employment and the Department of Social Security and headed by the Secretary of State for Work and...
, the Department of Energy and Climate Change
Department of Energy and Climate Change
The Department of Energy and Climate Change is a British government department created on 3 October 2008 by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to take over some of the functions of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs...
, the Department of Health, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, commonly called the Foreign Office or the FCO is a British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom overseas, created in 1968 by merging the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office.The head of the FCO is the...
, the Home Office
Home Office
The Home Office is the United Kingdom government department responsible for immigration control, security, and order. As such it is responsible for the police, UK Border Agency, and the Security Service . It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs,...
, Her Majesty's Treasury, Lichfield District Council
Lichfield District Council
Lichfield District Council is a non metropolitan district council, which covers the district of Lichfield in Staffordshire, England. It was formed in 1974 from Lichfield City Council and Lichfield Rural District Council...
, the Ministry of Defence
Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Defence is the United Kingdom government department responsible for implementation of government defence policy and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces....
, the Ministry of Justice, the Northern Ireland Office
Northern Ireland Office
The Northern Ireland Office is a United Kingdom government department responsible for Northern Ireland affairs. The NIO is led by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and is based in Northern Ireland at Stormont House.-Role:...
, the Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...
, and the Society of Information Technology Management.
Ordnance Survey data
When data.gov.uk was officially launched in January 2010 Ordnance SurveyOrdnance Survey
Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...
data was one of the key data sets that Berners-Lee and Professor Shadbolt wanted to see opened up as part of the project. Ordnance Survey data was included in data.gov.uk on 1 April 2010 and provides information on geographical locations. According to Professor Shadbolt "will make a real difference to the way that people make sense of the information".
Combined Online Information System (COINS) data
On the 3 June 2010 the Treasury released the COINS data for the financial years 2008/09 and 2009/10. The Combined Online Information SystemCombined Online Information System
The Combined Online Information System is a database containing HM Treasury's detailed analysis of departmental spending under thousands of category headings. The database contains around 24 million lines of data...
, known as COINS, operates as the UK Government's central accounting system. COINS data details the spent of all government department and their major spending programmes. The 4.3GB of COIN data included 3.2 million items for the financial year 2009/10 and was released using BitTorrent. The UK government has stated that data for the current financial year (2010/11) will be released in June 2011. HM Treasury also cited "the impenetrability of the information to a lay user" and "the potential significant cost and difficulty of rebutting misunderstandings" as reasons for not releasing the data. On the 15 of June the UK Government published the COINS data for the financial years 2008/09, 2007/08, 2006/07 and 2005/06 on data.gov.uk. Within 24 hours of the release the data was also made available through the RA.Pid Gateway webportal run by Rosslyn Analytics.
The HM Treasury
HM Treasury
HM Treasury, in full Her Majesty's Treasury, informally The Treasury, is the United Kingdom government department responsible for developing and executing the British government's public finance policy and economic policy...
had refused previous requests to release COIN data on the grounds that it contained FOI-exempt data on future defence and security services spending. HM Treasury also cited "the impenetrability of the information to a lay user" and "the potential significant cost and difficulty of rebutting misunderstandings" as reasons for not releasing the data.
Data to be added
data.gov.uk is working with UK Government departments, agencies and local authorities to release more data. Professor Shadbolt also wants local government data included in data.gov.uk.Data use and licensing
data.gov.uk offers a wide range of public sector data, ranging from traffic statistics to crime figures. The data can be used for private or commercial purposes. The aim is to kick-start the development of services that find novel ways to make use of the information.All data included in data.gov.uk is covered either by Crown Copyright
Crown copyright
Crown copyright is a form of copyright claim used by the governments of a number of Commonwealth realms. It provides special copyright rules for the Crown .- Australia :...
, the Crown Database Right or have been licensed to the Crown. In turn, all data available on data.gov.uk is available under a worldwide, royalty
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
-free, perpetual
Perpetual
Perpetual may refer to:*Perpetual bond, a bond which pays coupons forever*Perpetual curacy, a type of Christian priesthood*Perpetual virginity, a Christian doctrine concerning the Virgin Mary*Perpetual Entertainment, a software development company...
, non-exclusive license which permits use of the data under the following conditions: the copyright and the source of the data should be acknowledged by including an attribution statement specified by data.gov.uk, which is name of data provider' data © Crown copyright and database right. the inclusion of the same acknowledgement is required in sub-licensing of the data, and further sub-licenses should require the same. The data should not be used in a way that suggests that the data provider endorses the use of the data. And the data or its source should not be misrepresented.
The Crown copyright
Crown copyright
Crown copyright is a form of copyright claim used by the governments of a number of Commonwealth realms. It provides special copyright rules for the Crown .- Australia :...
license permits anyone to copy, distribute and transmit the data, adapt the data, exploit the data commercially, whether by sublicensing it, combining it with other data or by including it in products and applications. The terms of the license are aligned with any Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S...
. Hence data.gov.uk data can be mixed with information licensed under Creative Commons licenses to create derivative work, which can be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. When users submit information to data.gov.uk it is assumed that grant the Crown a non-exclusive, irrevocable right to use and pass on all public information submitted, such as descriptions of ideas and screenshots of apps, as well as the right to re-use allow the re-use of that information. All content on the site is placed under the same license terms as the data, though user ideas and application remain their own.
The Crown copyright
Crown copyright
Crown copyright is a form of copyright claim used by the governments of a number of Commonwealth realms. It provides special copyright rules for the Crown .- Australia :...
license does not affect fair dealing
Fair dealing
Fair dealing is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work, which is found in many of the common law jurisdictions of the Commonwealth of Nations....
or fair use
Fair use
Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...
rights, or any other exceptions and limitations to copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
or database rights
Database rights
In European Union law, database rights are specifically coded laws on the copying and dissemination of information in computer databases...
. The data is licensed "as is" and data.gov.uk does not accept liabilities in relation to the data or provide warranties. Neither does data.gov.uk guarantee the continued supply of the data.
Government project
Authorized by the UK Cabinet Office and aims for the release of public data to become "business as usual" across public bodies, as set out in Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government, which established the UK Government's approach to public data and the release of that data. data.gov.uk amongst others delivers on the commitment made in Putting the Frontline First to integrate data from the Publications Hub for National Statistics and to release more data relating to health.Project leaders
Sir Tim Berners-LeeTim Berners-Lee
Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, , also known as "TimBL", is a British computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web...
and Professor Nigel Shadbolt
Nigel Shadbolt
Nigel Richard Shadbolt FREng CEng CITP FBCS is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.Nigel Shadbolt was born in London. He studied for an undergraduate degree in philosophy and psychology at Newcastle University. His PhD was from the Department of...
are the two key figures behind the project. According to Berners-Lee "Government data is something we have already spent the money on... and when it is sitting there on a disk in somebody's office it is wasted." Professor Shadbolt told the BBC that "A lot of this is about changing assumptions" and that if the data "can be published under an FOI (Freedom of Information
Freedom of information in the United Kingdom
Freedom of information legislation in the United Kingdom is controlled by two Acts of the United Kingdom and Scottish Parliaments respectively, which both came into force on 1 January 2005.* Freedom of Information Act 2000...
) request why not publish it online?". In April 2010, commenting on the opening up of Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...
data Berners-Lee said that: "The changes signal a wider cultural change in Government based on an assumption that information should be in the public domain unless there is a good reason not to - not the other way around." He went on to say "Greater openness, accountability and transparency in Government will give people greater choice and make it easier for individuals to get more directly involved in issues that matter to them."
Current technology infrastructure
The site uses the CKAN platform for data publishing.Similar projects in the UK
On the 29 January 2010 Boris JohnsonBoris Johnson
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is a British journalist and Conservative Party politician, who has been the elected Mayor of London since 2008...
, mayor of London, opened an online data warehouse containing more than 200 data sets from London city authorities
Greater London Authority
The Greater London Authority is the top-tier administrative body for Greater London, England. It consists of a directly elected executive Mayor of London, currently Boris Johnson, and an elected 25-member London Assembly with scrutiny powers...
.
Similar projects in other countries
There is a growing trend amongst governments toward more data transparency. In the US the Obama administration launched data.govData.gov
Data.gov is a U.S. government website launched in late May 2009 by the then Federal Chief Information Officer of the United States, Vivek Kundra....
, which opens up data from various departments, including the US Defence Department and NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
.
The European Public Sector Information (PSI) Platform maintains a list of PSI data catalogues provided by governments and providing direct access to data.
See also
- Budapest Open Access InitiativeBudapest Open Access InitiativeThe Budapest Open Access Initiative was a conference convened by the Open Society Institute on December 1-2, 2001. This small gathering of individuals is recognised as one of the major historical, and defining, events of the open access movement....
- Data.govData.govData.gov is a U.S. government website launched in late May 2009 by the then Federal Chief Information Officer of the United States, Vivek Kundra....
- Government 2.0
- Linked DataLinked DataIn computing, linked data describes a method of publishing structured data so that it can be interlinked and become more useful. It builds upon standard Web technologies such as HTTP and URIs, but rather than using them to serve web pages for human readers, it extends them to share information in a...
- Merton ThesisMerton ThesisThe Merton Thesis is an argument about the nature of early experimental science proposed by Robert K. Merton. Similar to Max Weber's famous claim on the link between Protestant ethic and the capitalist economy, Merton argued for a similar positive correlation between the rise of Protestant pietism...
- Open access (publishing)
- Open contentOpen contentOpen content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software....
- Open dataOpen DataOpen data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open...
- Open researchOpen researchOpen research is research conducted in the spirit of free and open source software. Much like open source schemes that are built around a source code that is made public, the central theme of open research is to make clear accounts of the methodology freely available via the internet, along with...
- TheyWorkForYouTheyWorkForYouTheyWorkForYou is a website run by mySociety, a project of registered charity UK Citizens Online Democracy, and is a tool for political campaigners and those interested in the Parliamentary activities of UK MPs, Lords, and Northern Ireland MLAs....