Turning Data into gold

Open Data’s biggest UK fan? How about the man in charge of all our finances - The Chancellor, George Osborne.

 

That’s one way to read the very strong commitment the Treasury made in the Autumn Statement last November, where the government outlined a wide range of measures to strengthen its commitment to the approach.

 

That’s when the Coalition promised, after all, that information relating to healthcare, travel, weather forecasting and house prices will be among the first to be freed up in a move designed to create growth and jobs in UK industry.

 

The Cabinet Office has meanwhile announced a new Data Strategy Board made up of data users, which will be responsible for public sector contracts with the Public Data Group – with a budget of up to £7m over the next three years to spend on making more official data freely available.

 

Over at Health, the NHS is set to pump out new data to help the healthcare research industry and academia to develop new products and services to aid advances in medical diagnosis and treatment.

 

"We are committed to making this Government a world leader in transparency and have made a wealth of data available for the first time to improve performance in public services and drive growth as applications of the data are developed,” says Number 10.

 

Health, weather, land, transport – the range of sources goes on and on. And that’s just in this country. In Europe, the EU’s data strategy says as much as 140 billion euros worth of industry and business might be opened up this way. No wonder, if it works, that Brussels titled that document ‘Turning government data into gold.’

 

Impressive stuff. But how can we actually get there? In this special Agenda on Open Data, we’ve worked with our sponsor partner UNIT4 to unpack both the promise and the challenges public sector organisations may face unlocking and exploiting that ‘gold’.

 

We hope you find what we’ve found useful – and we encourage you to explore this resource as a way to find your way to leverage all that data sitting in your silos.

 

Good luck!

 

Gary Flood

Editor

PublicTechnology.net

Gary.Flood@SiftMedia.co.uk