Zoe Kleinman reported in the BBC NEWS that UK Government opens data to public. Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the WEB, is behind this project, big mentality change for the UK governement 🙂 :
An ambitious website that will open up government data to the public will launch in beta, or pilot, form in December.
Reams of anonymous data about schools, crime and health could all be included.
Data.gov.uk has been developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the web, and Professor Nigel Shadbolt at the University of Southampton.
It is designed to be similar to the Obama administration’s data.gov project, run by Vivek Kundra.
Mr Kundra is Chief Information Officer in the US. The American site, while not yet comprehensive, is already up and running, with improvements fuelled by user feedback.
This is good for the public and also for the UK government, there is a return of investment:
Data.gov.uk is built with semantic web technology, which will enable the data it offers to be drawn together into links and threads as the user searches.
Let’s enjoy in December our Christmas gift, give a lot of feedback to improve the offer of the website, and encourage others to imitate the movement.
