Government looks to publish all its data

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The UK Government may be bringing all its published data together onto one site, following in the footsteps of the US.

A Cabinet Office Digital Engagement blog post from Richard Stirling has opened up discussion to address a recommendation from the Power of Information Task Force report.

The report said: “The government should ensure that public information data sets are easy to find and use. The government should create a place or places online where public information can be stored and maintained (a repository) or its location and characteristics listed (an online catalogue).”

It also says that prototypes of this should be up and running in 2009.

Stirling listed asked for advice on the best way to create the site, based on the American data.gov.

“Any solution must support open standards and would ideally be open source, but there are a couple of other questions we are pondering at the moment,” he wrote.

These include looking at whether feeds or bulk downloads would be useful, or if it should serve particular forms of data such those set out by the Resource Description Framework (RDF), and whether the site requires its own domain.

As well as comments directly on the blog, Stirling suggested hash tagging Twitter comments with #poit or #opendata, which will also be taken on board.

In May, Andrew Stott was appointed as the new director of Digital Engagement, based in the Cabinet Office.

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