1. The UK has made amazing strides in opening up non-personal data held by government in the last 12 months. Data.gov.uk has pushed up the global stakes in accountability and transparency. But there is still a lot more to do in expanding and improving the accessibility to government data and in making use of the data.
  2. Most of attention so far has been on central government data, but local government data is where the real gains can be made. The coalition government is putting pressure on local government to open more data, not least the requirement that all expenditure over £500 is made public within 6 months. Councils can do this the lazy way by dumping lists into .pdfs, or we can grab the opportunity to publish this openly as linked data which gives us amazing benchmarking and efficiency opportunities.
  3. Open data and linked data are not the same thing. Information can be made open, but published in formats (like .pdfs or locked excel spreadsheets) that makes it pretty much useless and difficult to combine with other data sets. That’s not real transparency.
  4. Linked data is the ability to add one data set to another data set and use it for further applications – what’s called mashups. To do this we need to make some changes to the way we present information and we need some naming standards – or ontologies. These aren’t necessarily expensive changes, but they do require some skill and effort.
  5. Linked data does not have to be open data. Public services would benefit tremendously from using linked data formats. It means that we could stop spending resources on data aggregation and start spending it on analysis and action. Linked data can be used in secure settings to help partners share personal, sensitive or commercial information on performance and resources and help better target those in need or areas for improvement.
  6. There are lots of potential benefits to linked and open data. Most of them fall under enhancing democracy and accountability, making useful applications for citizens and consumers and better use of information by government itself. All of them have huge efficiency opportunities. We’re only at the beginning of realising the benefits.
  7. Few councils in the UK are really doing very much with open and linked data. But we can look to these early leaders and examples in the US for potential benefits and key lessons.
  8. There are some substantial cultural and institutional barriers to opening up government data. And we could easily fall into the trap of endlessly arguing about standards and not just getting on with it. But if we work together, we can crack this and reap the rewards.

The maths geniuses among you will note that there are only 8 points.  You can interpret this in a couple of ways:

1. There are two points aimed at internal audiences that I don’t yet feel comfortable sharing

2. I’m leaving space for you to add your comments.



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