Open Data in the United Kingdom
Encyclopedia
There have been campaigns in the UK for its government to open up the large amounts of data it has for greater public usage without prohibitively large fees. Currently UK public sector data are released under a Creative Commons compatible license.
newspaper's Technology section began a "Free Our Data" campaign, calling for data gathered by authorities at public expense to be made freely available for reuse by individuals.
In 2010 with the creation of the Open Government License and the Data.gov.uk
site it appeared that the campaign had been mostly successful.
On 12 January 2011 the Coalition Government
revealed that it was planning to establish a Public Data Corporation. The goal being to make the UK Government data provided in a much more consistent fashion as well as freeing more data for public and commercial use. Though no idea of what new data may be freed by the creation of the corporation is made. Though it showed that the UK Government continues to appear to be supportive of Open Data.
In 2010 the UK Government created the Open Government Licence, and most data covered by Crown Copyright is now under the new Open Government Licence. All public sector information is now available under a free, perpetual licence without restrictions beyond attribution. This new licence was based on, and designed to work with the Creative Commons licences.
.
service.
Its main role is to produce forecast models by gathering all the information from weather satellite
s in space and observations on earth. The principle weather products for UK customers are 36-hour forecasts from the newly-operational 1.5 km resolution UKV model covering the UK and surroundings (replacing the 4 km model), 48-hour forecasts from the 12 km resolution NAE model covering Europe
and the North Atlantic, and 144-hour forecasts from the 25 km resolution global model (replacing the 40 km global model). A wide range of other products for other regions of the globe are sold to customers abroad, provided for MOD
operations abroad or provided free to developing countries in Africa. This main bulk of data are then passed on to companies who acquire it. Data are stored in the Met Office's own PP-format
.
The Met Office held the base data involved in the Climatic Research Unit hacking incident and released information to the public alongside the Climatic Research Unit
when pressed.
has been subject to criticisms. Most criticism centres on the point that Ordnance Survey possesses a virtual government monopoly on geographic data in the UK, while, although a government agency, since 1999 it has been required to act as a Trading Fund
or commercial entity. This means that it is supposed to be totally self-funding from the commercial sale of its data and derived products - whilst at the same time it is supposed to be the public supplier of geographical information. In 1985 the "Committee of Enquiry into the Handling of Geographic Information" was set up in to “advise the Secretary of State for the Environment within two years on the future handling of geographic information in the UK, taking account of modern developments in information technology and market needs”. The Committee's final report was published under the name of its chairman, Roger Chorley
, in 1987. The report stressed the importance of widely available geographic information to the UK and recommended a loosening of government policies on distribution and cost recovery.
Ordnance Survey historical works are generally available, as the agency is covered by Crown Copyright
: works more than fifty years old, including historic surveys of Britain and Ireland and much of the New Popular Edition, are in the public domain. However, finding suitable originals remains an issue as Ordnance Survey does not provide historical mapping on 'free' terms, instead marketing commercially 'enhanced' reproductions in partnership with Landmark. This can be contrasted with, for example, the approach in the Republic of Ireland
in more recent times, where Ordnance Survey Ireland
claims regular copyright over its mapping (and over digital copies of the public domain historical mapping).
is a division of the UK Department for Transport
to develop better information technology systems to support public transport. Traveline has created a comprehensive database of all public transport movements in the United Kingdom and it is used to power the Transport Direct Portal
. Since the launch of the Portal in December 2004 there have been growing calls for the public transport schedule data, which is generally owned by the transport operator, to be made available as Open data
.
The development of Traveline and Transport Direct has created a number of comprehensive national datasets to support the Transport Direct Portal
. The assessment of accessibility to services by public transport was made a requirement for the Local Transport Plan
s in 2004. Measuring the level of accessibility required the use of the data collected by Traveline.
This data are being used by an increasing number of 3rd parties, including Google Transit (South East Traveline Region) and East Anglia / East Midlands Traveline Regions. MySociety
's 'Mapumental' accessibility product. During 2010 increasing amounts of data has become available as Open Data
including NaPTAN and NPTDR.
newspaper's Technology section began a "Free Our Data" campaign, calling for the raw data gathered by Ordnance Survey (not to mention data gathered on its behalf by local authorities at public expense) to be made freely available for reuse by individuals and companies, as happens, for example, with such data in the USA. However, Ordnance Survey claimed that the quality of the freely available government mapping in the USA is low or variable because of funding issues.
On the 7 April 2006 the Office of Public Sector Information
(OPSI) received a complaint from the data management company Intelligent Addressing. Many, although not all, complaints were upheld by the OPSI, one of the conclusions being that Ordnance Survey "is offering licence terms which unnecessarily restrict competition". Negotiations between Ordnance Survey and interested parties are ongoing with regard to the issues raised by the OPSI report, Ordnance Survey being under no obligation to comply with the report's recommendations.
In June 2006 the Free our data campaign asked "In an age when it is not seen as appropriate for the public sector to run power stations or railways, why is it running nationalised industries in what should be the most dynamic sector of all, the web-based knowledge economy?" And said that "The question lies at the heart of our campaign, which argues that government’s role should be to collect and administer high-quality raw data, but make it freely available to everyone to create innovative services". Transport Direct's chief executive, Nick Ilsley, said that research by the department prior to Transport Direct’s launch had showed the private sector was not interested in providing a one-stop all-purpose site.
In April 2007, Cabinet Office
Minister Hilary Armstrong
commissioned Ed Mayo
and MySociety
director Tom Steinberg to draft a "Power of Information Review" on how the government could serve the public's information needs better. The resulting report led Cabinet Minister Tom Watson
, MP to create a 'Power of Information Task Force.
Since August 2007, Ordnance Survey has contracted the political lobbying company Mandate Communications to help campaign against the free data movement and discover which politicians and advisers support Open Data or have questioned Ordnance Survey policies.
In 2008 MySociety requested to OPSI that the dataset should be made available for re-use as Open Data
rather than at a charge of £7,500.
In April 2008 Tom Watson
MP, Parliamentary Secretary
at the Cabinet Office
said that pledged to turn upside down the British public's "recipient relationship" with official information.
The 'Power of Information Taskforce Report' was published by the Cabinet Office in February 2009. It reported that although the National Public Transport Data Repository, described itself as ‘Crown Copyright’ investigations showed this database is not actually government data and that the NPTDR charges significant fees for use. The report suggested that there should be a presumption in favour of information which has been created by public sector bodies being available for re-use. They also suggested that there should be a clear and consistent copyright and licensing rules applied making it easy to work with data from multiple sources in the public sector. They recommended a 'Crown Commons' style approach with "highly permissive licensing scheme that is transparent, easy to understand and easy to use, modelled on the 'Click Use' license".
Also in February 2009 Tom Watson MP from the Cabinet Office advised that the UK government would put Open-source software
on equal footing for procurement; stating that "Procurement decisions will be made on the basis on the best value for money solution to the business requirement, taking account of total lifetime cost of ownership of the solution, including exit and transition costs, after ensuring that solutions fulfil minimum and essential capability, security, scalability, transferability, support and manageability requirements." and "Where there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products, open source will be selected on the basis of its additional inherent flexibility".
In August 2009 Tom Watson MP mused on his website under the title "Wacky terms and conditions" about why the DirectGov version of the transport direct portal included this condition: “you may retrieve and display Content from the Website on an electronic visual display device, print individual pages on paper (but not photocopy them)”.
In September 2009 Sir Tim Berners Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt
who had been appointed by Gordon Brown to advise the Government on how to make data more accessible to the public were invited to Number 10 Downing Street to present their early findings to the cabinet.
In October 2009 Tom Watson MP questioned why railway timetables were the train operators' private intellectual property. He asked Junior transport minister Chris Mole
: "Does not my hon. Friend think that the timetable data belong to the people, and that we should make them available for free?". He also proposed an Early Day Motion
that read "That this House calls on the Government to ensure that transport timetables for rail and bus operators are made freely available for re-use, using an open standards format, thus enabling voluntary and commercial organisations to publish the data on their own digital platforms". It was signed by 32 MPs.
In November 2009 the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown
announced that "mid-scale" data from Ordnance Survey would be made available for free reuse, including commercial applications, from April 2010. A consultation was held inviting responses between 23 December and 17 March by the Department of Communities and Local Government.
In December 2009 Local Transport Today reported that 'Data release could spark transport IT innovations". The magazine reported that "Among the data to be made accessible through the site are trunk road traffic volumes, the National Public Transport Access Node (NaPTAN) database and the National Public Transport Data Repository (NPTDR)". A DfT spokeswoman was reported to say: “We will seek to embrace new technology to enable partners to provide exciting, user-focused services such as recently seen with satellite navigation and i-phone applications,”
In January 2010 a new government web-service, data.gov.uk
was unveiled which would "offer reams of public sector data, ranging from traffic statistics to crime figures, for private or commercial use". The aim of the project was to "kickstart a new wave of services that find novel ways to make use of the information". The US had recently launched data.gov
and London Mayor Boris Johnson
had created the London Data Store the same month.
In March 2010 the Prime Minister Gordon Brown
announced that the NaPTAN dataset was to be immediately made available from the data.gov.uk site as Open Data
, as well as confirming an impending release of Ordnance Survey
data. In his speech he observed that at present public transport timetables and real-time running information was owned by the operating companies but that the government would work to free it up. He also said that "from today we will make it a condition of future franchises that this data will be made freely available".
Also in March 2010 a Freedom of Information
request was made to the Department for Transport inquiring about arrangements that had been made for the release of cycling data that was being collected for the portal at public expense. It requested information about any claims the Ordnance Survey
would have over the data and if so the terms, and prices charged for making the data available to Ordnance Survey customers. Also the cost to a Local Authority for adding their area to the planner and for notes of any meetings of project boards and working parties. A response was published on 1 April 2010.
On 1 April 2010 Ordnance Survey released the brand OS OpenData, under an attribution-only license compatible with CC-by
. Various groups and individuals had campaigned for this release of data, but some were disappointed when the some of the profitable datasets were not included - withheld for the counter-argument that if licensees do not pay for OS data collection then the government would have to be willing to foot a £30m p.a. bill, to obtain the future economic benefit of sharing the highly detailed mapping produced by the UK's national agency.
The files have been cached on the MySociety
website for convenient download. They can also be found on the OS website alongside their commercial data.
June 2010 saw Transport for London
release a substantial amount of its data for free reuse, even in commercial settings. This did not include the Rondle or Underground schedules, though the underground data was released in the following months. Following the release of this data numerous "apps" for phones and online facilities appeared that made use of it.
In September 2010 the UK Government announced that all public sector information was now available under a free licence without the need to seek permission to use the information. This new license is called the Open Government License and was based on, and designed to work with, Creative Commons licences.
Overview
Crown Copyright has been a long standing copyright protection applied to official works, and at times artistic works , produced under royal or official supervision. The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper's Technology section began a "Free Our Data" campaign, calling for data gathered by authorities at public expense to be made freely available for reuse by individuals.
In 2010 with the creation of the Open Government License and the Data.gov.uk
Data.gov.uk
data.gov.uk is a UK Government project to open up almost all non-personal data acquired for official purposes for free re-use. Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt are the two key figures behind the project.- Beta version and launch :...
site it appeared that the campaign had been mostly successful.
On 12 January 2011 the Coalition Government
Coalition government
A coalition government is a cabinet of a parliamentary government in which several political parties cooperate. The usual reason given for this arrangement is that no party on its own can achieve a majority in the parliament...
revealed that it was planning to establish a Public Data Corporation. The goal being to make the UK Government data provided in a much more consistent fashion as well as freeing more data for public and commercial use. Though no idea of what new data may be freed by the creation of the corporation is made. Though it showed that the UK Government continues to appear to be supportive of Open Data.
Open Government Licence
In 2010 the UK Government created the Open Government Licence, and most data covered by Crown Copyright is now under the new Open Government Licence. All public sector information is now available under a free, perpetual licence without restrictions beyond attribution. This new licence was based on, and designed to work with the Creative Commons licences.
Data holders
Crown Copyright is the default copyright applied to all government department published documents. In late 2010 it was changed from a closed license to one compatible with CC BY 3.0Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S...
.
Met Office
The Met Office is the national weatherWeather
Weather is the state of the atmosphere, to the degree that it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. Most weather phenomena occur in the troposphere, just below the stratosphere. Weather refers, generally, to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate...
service.
Its main role is to produce forecast models by gathering all the information from weather satellite
Weather satellite
The weather satellite is a type of satellite that is primarily used to monitor the weather and climate of the Earth. Satellites can be either polar orbiting, seeing the same swath of the Earth every 12 hours, or geostationary, hovering over the same spot on Earth by orbiting over the equator while...
s in space and observations on earth. The principle weather products for UK customers are 36-hour forecasts from the newly-operational 1.5 km resolution UKV model covering the UK and surroundings (replacing the 4 km model), 48-hour forecasts from the 12 km resolution NAE model covering Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the North Atlantic, and 144-hour forecasts from the 25 km resolution global model (replacing the 40 km global model). A wide range of other products for other regions of the globe are sold to customers abroad, provided for MOD
Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Defence is the United Kingdom government department responsible for implementation of government defence policy and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces....
operations abroad or provided free to developing countries in Africa. This main bulk of data are then passed on to companies who acquire it. Data are stored in the Met Office's own PP-format
PP-format
The PP-format is a Met Office proprietary file format for meteorological data.Simulations of the weather are performed by the Met Office's Unified Model, which can be used for Numerical Weather Prediction or Climatology, and data is collected...
.
The Met Office held the base data involved in the Climatic Research Unit hacking incident and released information to the public alongside the Climatic Research Unit
Climatic Research Unit
The Climatic Research Unit is a component of the University of East Anglia and is one of the leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change....
when pressed.
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance SurveyOrdnance Survey
Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...
has been subject to criticisms. Most criticism centres on the point that Ordnance Survey possesses a virtual government monopoly on geographic data in the UK, while, although a government agency, since 1999 it has been required to act as a Trading Fund
Trading Fund
A trading fund is a UK executive agency, government department or part of a department, which has been established as such by means of a Trading Fund Order made under the Government Trading Funds Act 1973....
or commercial entity. This means that it is supposed to be totally self-funding from the commercial sale of its data and derived products - whilst at the same time it is supposed to be the public supplier of geographical information. In 1985 the "Committee of Enquiry into the Handling of Geographic Information" was set up in to “advise the Secretary of State for the Environment within two years on the future handling of geographic information in the UK, taking account of modern developments in information technology and market needs”. The Committee's final report was published under the name of its chairman, Roger Chorley
Roger Chorley, 2nd Baron Chorley
Roger Richard Edward Chorley, 2nd Baron Chorley is a British chartered accountant and peer.The son of the 1st Baron Chorley was educated at Stowe School, Buckinghamshire, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in natural sciences and economics in 1953...
, in 1987. The report stressed the importance of widely available geographic information to the UK and recommended a loosening of government policies on distribution and cost recovery.
Ordnance Survey historical works are generally available, as the agency is covered by Crown Copyright
Crown copyright
Crown copyright is a form of copyright claim used by the governments of a number of Commonwealth realms. It provides special copyright rules for the Crown .- Australia :...
: works more than fifty years old, including historic surveys of Britain and Ireland and much of the New Popular Edition, are in the public domain. However, finding suitable originals remains an issue as Ordnance Survey does not provide historical mapping on 'free' terms, instead marketing commercially 'enhanced' reproductions in partnership with Landmark. This can be contrasted with, for example, the approach in the Republic of Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
in more recent times, where Ordnance Survey Ireland
Ordnance Survey Ireland
Ordnance Survey Ireland is the national mapping agency of the Republic of Ireland and, together with the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland , succeeded, after 1922, the Irish operations of the United Kingdom Ordnance Survey. It is part of the Public service of the Republic of Ireland...
claims regular copyright over its mapping (and over digital copies of the public domain historical mapping).
Transport Direct
Transport DirectTransport Direct
Transport Direct is a division of the UK Department for Transport to develop better information technology systems to support public transport. It developed and operates the Transport Direct Portal which is a public facing multi-modal journey planner...
is a division of the UK Department for Transport
Department for Transport
In the United Kingdom, the Department for Transport is the government department responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which are not devolved...
to develop better information technology systems to support public transport. Traveline has created a comprehensive database of all public transport movements in the United Kingdom and it is used to power the Transport Direct Portal
Transport Direct Portal
The Transport Direct Portal is a distributed Internet-based multi-modal journey planner providing information for travel in England, Wales and Scotland. It is managed by Transport Direct, a division of the Department for Transport...
. Since the launch of the Portal in December 2004 there have been growing calls for the public transport schedule data, which is generally owned by the transport operator, to be made available as Open data
Open Data
Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open...
.
The development of Traveline and Transport Direct has created a number of comprehensive national datasets to support the Transport Direct Portal
Transport Direct Portal
The Transport Direct Portal is a distributed Internet-based multi-modal journey planner providing information for travel in England, Wales and Scotland. It is managed by Transport Direct, a division of the Department for Transport...
. The assessment of accessibility to services by public transport was made a requirement for the Local Transport Plan
Local Transport Plan
Local transport plans, divided into full local transport plans and local implementation plans for transport are an important part of transport planning in England...
s in 2004. Measuring the level of accessibility required the use of the data collected by Traveline.
This data are being used by an increasing number of 3rd parties, including Google Transit (South East Traveline Region) and East Anglia / East Midlands Traveline Regions. MySociety
MySociety
mySociety is an e-democracy project of the UK-based registered charity named UK Citizens Online Democracy, that aims to build "socially focussed tools with offline impacts". It was founded by Tom Steinberg in September 2003, and started activity after receiving a £250,000 grant in September 2004...
's 'Mapumental' accessibility product. During 2010 increasing amounts of data has become available as Open Data
Open Data
Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open...
including NaPTAN and NPTDR.
United Kingdom Hydrographic Office
The UK Hydrographic Office is another data holder in the UK who has been listed by Free Our Data as a government office which is charging for the use of its data that Free Our Data believes should be opened for public use. The UK Hydrographic Office has data on tidal patterns and the position of astronomical bodies used in navigation.History
In March 2006 The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper's Technology section began a "Free Our Data" campaign, calling for the raw data gathered by Ordnance Survey (not to mention data gathered on its behalf by local authorities at public expense) to be made freely available for reuse by individuals and companies, as happens, for example, with such data in the USA. However, Ordnance Survey claimed that the quality of the freely available government mapping in the USA is low or variable because of funding issues.
On the 7 April 2006 the Office of Public Sector Information
Office of Public Sector Information
The Office of Public Sector Information is the body responsible for the operation of Her Majesty's Stationery Office and of other public information services of the United Kingdom...
(OPSI) received a complaint from the data management company Intelligent Addressing. Many, although not all, complaints were upheld by the OPSI, one of the conclusions being that Ordnance Survey "is offering licence terms which unnecessarily restrict competition". Negotiations between Ordnance Survey and interested parties are ongoing with regard to the issues raised by the OPSI report, Ordnance Survey being under no obligation to comply with the report's recommendations.
In June 2006 the Free our data campaign asked "In an age when it is not seen as appropriate for the public sector to run power stations or railways, why is it running nationalised industries in what should be the most dynamic sector of all, the web-based knowledge economy?" And said that "The question lies at the heart of our campaign, which argues that government’s role should be to collect and administer high-quality raw data, but make it freely available to everyone to create innovative services". Transport Direct's chief executive, Nick Ilsley, said that research by the department prior to Transport Direct’s launch had showed the private sector was not interested in providing a one-stop all-purpose site.
In April 2007, Cabinet Office
Cabinet Office
The Cabinet Office is a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for supporting the Prime Minister and Cabinet of the United Kingdom....
Minister Hilary Armstrong
Hilary Armstrong
Hilary Jane Armstrong, Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for North West Durham from 1987 to 2010.-Early life:...
commissioned Ed Mayo
Ed Mayo
Ed Mayo is Secretary General of Co-operatives UK, the UK trade association for co-operatives. He is the former Chief Executive of the British National Consumer Council and CEO of the NCC's successor, Consumer Focus.-Education:...
and MySociety
MySociety
mySociety is an e-democracy project of the UK-based registered charity named UK Citizens Online Democracy, that aims to build "socially focussed tools with offline impacts". It was founded by Tom Steinberg in September 2003, and started activity after receiving a £250,000 grant in September 2004...
director Tom Steinberg to draft a "Power of Information Review" on how the government could serve the public's information needs better. The resulting report led Cabinet Minister Tom Watson
Tom Watson (politician)
Thomas Anthony Watson is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East since 2001. Watson was a Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office from 2008 to 2009...
, MP to create a 'Power of Information Task Force.
Since August 2007, Ordnance Survey has contracted the political lobbying company Mandate Communications to help campaign against the free data movement and discover which politicians and advisers support Open Data or have questioned Ordnance Survey policies.
In 2008 MySociety requested to OPSI that the dataset should be made available for re-use as Open Data
Open Data
Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open...
rather than at a charge of £7,500.
In April 2008 Tom Watson
Tom Watson (politician)
Thomas Anthony Watson is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East since 2001. Watson was a Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office from 2008 to 2009...
MP, Parliamentary Secretary
Parliamentary Secretary
A Parliamentary Secretary is a member of a Parliament in the Westminster system who assists a more senior minister with his or her duties.In the parliamentary systems of several Commonwealth countries, such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, it is customary for the prime minister to...
at the Cabinet Office
Cabinet Office
The Cabinet Office is a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for supporting the Prime Minister and Cabinet of the United Kingdom....
said that pledged to turn upside down the British public's "recipient relationship" with official information.
The 'Power of Information Taskforce Report' was published by the Cabinet Office in February 2009. It reported that although the National Public Transport Data Repository, described itself as ‘Crown Copyright’ investigations showed this database is not actually government data and that the NPTDR charges significant fees for use. The report suggested that there should be a presumption in favour of information which has been created by public sector bodies being available for re-use. They also suggested that there should be a clear and consistent copyright and licensing rules applied making it easy to work with data from multiple sources in the public sector. They recommended a 'Crown Commons' style approach with "highly permissive licensing scheme that is transparent, easy to understand and easy to use, modelled on the 'Click Use' license".
Also in February 2009 Tom Watson MP from the Cabinet Office advised that the UK government would put Open-source software
Open-source software
Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...
on equal footing for procurement; stating that "Procurement decisions will be made on the basis on the best value for money solution to the business requirement, taking account of total lifetime cost of ownership of the solution, including exit and transition costs, after ensuring that solutions fulfil minimum and essential capability, security, scalability, transferability, support and manageability requirements." and "Where there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products, open source will be selected on the basis of its additional inherent flexibility".
In August 2009 Tom Watson MP mused on his website under the title "Wacky terms and conditions" about why the DirectGov version of the transport direct portal included this condition: “you may retrieve and display Content from the Website on an electronic visual display device, print individual pages on paper (but not photocopy them)”.
In September 2009 Sir Tim Berners Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt
Nigel Shadbolt
Nigel Richard Shadbolt FREng CEng CITP FBCS is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.Nigel Shadbolt was born in London. He studied for an undergraduate degree in philosophy and psychology at Newcastle University. His PhD was from the Department of...
who had been appointed by Gordon Brown to advise the Government on how to make data more accessible to the public were invited to Number 10 Downing Street to present their early findings to the cabinet.
In October 2009 Tom Watson MP questioned why railway timetables were the train operators' private intellectual property. He asked Junior transport minister Chris Mole
Chris Mole
Christopher David "Chris" Mole is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Ipswich from a by-election in 2001, after the death of Jamie Cann, and was re-elected in 2005...
: "Does not my hon. Friend think that the timetable data belong to the people, and that we should make them available for free?". He also proposed an Early Day Motion
Early day motion
An Early Day Motion , in the Westminster system, is a motion, expressed as a single sentence, tabled by Members of Parliament for debate "on an early day" . Controversial EDMs are not signed by Government Ministers, PPS or the Speaker of the House of Commons and very few are debated on the floor...
that read "That this House calls on the Government to ensure that transport timetables for rail and bus operators are made freely available for re-use, using an open standards format, thus enabling voluntary and commercial organisations to publish the data on their own digital platforms". It was signed by 32 MPs.
In November 2009 the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...
announced that "mid-scale" data from Ordnance Survey would be made available for free reuse, including commercial applications, from April 2010. A consultation was held inviting responses between 23 December and 17 March by the Department of Communities and Local Government.
In December 2009 Local Transport Today reported that 'Data release could spark transport IT innovations". The magazine reported that "Among the data to be made accessible through the site are trunk road traffic volumes, the National Public Transport Access Node (NaPTAN) database and the National Public Transport Data Repository (NPTDR)". A DfT spokeswoman was reported to say: “We will seek to embrace new technology to enable partners to provide exciting, user-focused services such as recently seen with satellite navigation and i-phone applications,”
In January 2010 a new government web-service, data.gov.uk
Data.gov.uk
data.gov.uk is a UK Government project to open up almost all non-personal data acquired for official purposes for free re-use. Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt are the two key figures behind the project.- Beta version and launch :...
was unveiled which would "offer reams of public sector data, ranging from traffic statistics to crime figures, for private or commercial use". The aim of the project was to "kickstart a new wave of services that find novel ways to make use of the information". The US had recently launched data.gov
Data.gov
Data.gov is a U.S. government website launched in late May 2009 by the then Federal Chief Information Officer of the United States, Vivek Kundra....
and London Mayor Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is a British journalist and Conservative Party politician, who has been the elected Mayor of London since 2008...
had created the London Data Store the same month.
In March 2010 the Prime Minister Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...
announced that the NaPTAN dataset was to be immediately made available from the data.gov.uk site as Open Data
Open Data
Open data is the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements such as open source, open...
, as well as confirming an impending release of Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...
data. In his speech he observed that at present public transport timetables and real-time running information was owned by the operating companies but that the government would work to free it up. He also said that "from today we will make it a condition of future franchises that this data will be made freely available".
Also in March 2010 a Freedom of Information
Freedom of information
Freedom of information refers to the protection of the right to freedom of expression with regards to the Internet and information technology . Freedom of information may also concern censorship in an information technology context, i.e...
request was made to the Department for Transport inquiring about arrangements that had been made for the release of cycling data that was being collected for the portal at public expense. It requested information about any claims the Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...
would have over the data and if so the terms, and prices charged for making the data available to Ordnance Survey customers. Also the cost to a Local Authority for adding their area to the planner and for notes of any meetings of project boards and working parties. A response was published on 1 April 2010.
On 1 April 2010 Ordnance Survey released the brand OS OpenData, under an attribution-only license compatible with CC-by
Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S...
. Various groups and individuals had campaigned for this release of data, but some were disappointed when the some of the profitable datasets were not included - withheld for the counter-argument that if licensees do not pay for OS data collection then the government would have to be willing to foot a £30m p.a. bill, to obtain the future economic benefit of sharing the highly detailed mapping produced by the UK's national agency.
The files have been cached on the MySociety
MySociety
mySociety is an e-democracy project of the UK-based registered charity named UK Citizens Online Democracy, that aims to build "socially focussed tools with offline impacts". It was founded by Tom Steinberg in September 2003, and started activity after receiving a £250,000 grant in September 2004...
website for convenient download. They can also be found on the OS website alongside their commercial data.
June 2010 saw Transport for London
Transport for London
Transport for London is the local government body responsible for most aspects of the transport system in Greater London in England. Its role is to implement the transport strategy and to manage transport services across London...
release a substantial amount of its data for free reuse, even in commercial settings. This did not include the Rondle or Underground schedules, though the underground data was released in the following months. Following the release of this data numerous "apps" for phones and online facilities appeared that made use of it.
In September 2010 the UK Government announced that all public sector information was now available under a free licence without the need to seek permission to use the information. This new license is called the Open Government License and was based on, and designed to work with, Creative Commons licences.
External links
- Data.gov.uk - The UK national data store
- Copyright status of work by the U.S. government, by contrast, most works of the United States government are legally considered to be in the public domainPublic domainWorks are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
- Free Our Data - Guardian Campaign
- Ordnance Survey
- Open Rights Group Open Data wiki page