Berners Lee Oversees Gov Data Site
Government statistics are finally available online from one easy search site. Sir Tim Berner-Lee, a founder of the www, is one of the people responsible for overseeing the government project: www.data.gov.uk.
The site has been available in its beta format since September 09 and has had 2,400 developers working on it. This resource is available for personal or commercial use. It will be invaluable as a business and marketing resource. What is surprising, or perhaps not, , is why this kind of project has not been available before.
Talking to the BBC, Sir Tim said:
‘It’s such an untapped resource. Government data is something we have already spent the money on… and when it is sitting there on a disk in somebody’s office it is wasted.’
Professor Nigel Shadbolt of Southampton University, helped develop the website. He said:
‘A lot of this is about changing assumptions. If [the data] can be published under an FOI (Freedom of Information) request why not publish it online?’
Of course, as with all statistics, caution needs to be exercised. The very nature of statistics means that you have to understand what is behind the stats. Why was the information gathered? How was it gathered? Who gathered it? Where their methods valid? These are all important questions that need to be answered in order to get the most from the statistics.
For online content managers the new site is a real boon. On the whole government statistics provide a great basis for online content that is valuable and well informed. Search marketing relies of good content more than ever since the implementation of Google Caffeine. Furthermore, the aim is that the site will also host local government data and location based data with collaboration from the Ordinance Survey who plan to provide free location maps. This will be very important if your target audience is locality specific.
The site encourages business collaboration:
‘We’re very aware that there are more people like you outside of government who have the skills and abilities to make wonderful things out of public data. These are our first steps in building a collaborative relationship with you.’