Data.gov.uk launches with much fanfare
Jinfo Blog

23rd January 2010

By Michele Bate

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Following on the heels of Anne Jordan’s report about Datastore, the newly launched source of information on the Greater London Authority (http://web.vivavip.com/forum/LiveWire/read.php?i=27753&start=0), comes news of the launch of another new data initiative in the United Kingdom. The UK government has launched data.gov.uk (http://www.data.gov.uk) amid a blaze of publicity in what it terms a public beta version. An ambitious website that will open up to the public data collected by the government, it aims to be a one-stop-shop for non-personal data. It was developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the web, and Professor Nigel Shadbolt at the University of Southampton and is designed to be similar to the Obama administration's data.gov project, run by Vivek Kundra, the US Chief Information Officer. Data.gov.uk uses semantic web technologies to encourage people to take the data, re-use it and “make interesting things with it”, according to the data.gov.uk blog (http://www.data.gov.uk/blog/public-site-launch). The idea is to encourage users to create data mashups and to visualise the data in clear, imaginative ways that provide more insight into the underlying information. So what does the website contain? Using the command “List all datasets” produces an alphabetic list of 2879 records to browse. Although there is a short list of common tags and it is possible to search by key word, there is no structured index to the data. Knowing what data is available and finding exactly what you want may therefore prove challenging. The datasets are many and varied - The Daily Telegraph highlighted 10 quirky ones, including centenarians in Scotland, GB road lengths and communal establishments by ability to speak Welsh. (http://digbig.com/5bayqf) The government clearly wants to make users’ experience of data.gov.uk as interactive as possible. In addition to the datasets themselves, the website contains a blog, a wiki, several discussion forums and a facility to enter SPARQL queries. There is also an “apps store”, which already contains several applications that look potentially useful in a professional or personal capacity. They include a renewable energy map of the UK (http://www.renewables-map.co.uk) and ZubedJobs(http://www.zubedjobs.com) for those seeking a new role or volunteering opportunity. In addition, visitors to the website can submit ideas in the hope that they will be picked up by someone with a shared interest and the necessary skills to turn them into applications. It will be interesting to see how what The Guardian described as “a world showcase for open government data” develops.

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