Computer Weekly reports that Tim Berners-Lee has been asked by the government to develop a single point of access for public data – as Stephen Timms, who has taken over where Tom Watson left off in the Cabinet Office, reports progress in “making public data public” (a concept that, when you think about it, seems a bit strange – as in “shouldn’t that have been done from the outset?”).

According to Computer Weekly, Timms told an RSA/Intellect event that

information is the “essential raw material” of a new digital society. “Government must play its part by setting a framework for new approaches to using data and ‘mashing’ data from different sources to provide new services which enhance our lives. In particular, we want government information to be accessible and useful for the widest possible spectrum of people.”

Well, minister, if that’s truly what you want, then you’ll make it free of charge, and free of copyright restrictions. It’s as simple as that. Could we suggest something like Creative Commons? The US government seems to find it amenable. .

Timms said, “We are supporting Sir Tim in a major new project, aiming for a single online point of contact for government data, and to extend access to data from the wider public sector. We want this project for ‘Making Public Data Public’ to put UK businesses and other organisations at the forefront of the new semantic web, and to be a platform for developing new technologies and new services.”

Fine words. We’d like some actions to go with them. We’re hearing plenty of sticks being wielded over how people use the net – Lord Mandelson’s threats to file-sharers, for example – but the carrots for companies to build on something that really would benefit Britain, by using British data, seems to be stuck on a really slow train.

Part of the problem, of course, is that it’s almost impossible to put a figure on how opportunity cost is lost through the lack of access to this data – whereas the music industry can much more easily point to figures it’s produced (though you may argue about their provenance) to suggest precisely how much harm it’s suffering through untrammelled downloading.

Interesting to contrast, though, that when we asked the Royal Mail to specify precisely how much harm it was suffering through the use by ernestmarples.com of the postcode to lat/long conversion, it robustly declined to say.

Of course there is the Cambridge trading funds report, with its analysis of the opportunity cost of the trading funds regime. But this goes much wider – the Cambridge analysis didn’t look at the Royal Mail and postcodes, for example, which have become embedded into many systems’ location processing.

Computer Weekly again:

So far, 1,300 people have signed up to the developer forum and contributed to the discussion board on what the data could be used for. The Cabinet Office also held a developers’ camp where ideas were shared.

We’ll have more about the devcamp in a future post.

The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
• Sounds like a good idea: Sir Tim Berners-Lee goes to Downing Street to talk open data (15 September 2009; score: 39.71%)
• How does Australia charge for government data? (30 November 2006; score: 36.29%)
• Today in The Guardian: Berners-Lee talks; who should we be chasing? (23 March 2006; score: 35.63%)
• Tim Berners-Lee agrees: our data should be free (17 March 2006; score: 34.49%)
• Gordon Brown announces OS maps to be free online (18 November 2009; score: 27.66%)