Coalition plan to build a central repository of public datasets could see partial selloff to private sector
The UK government is creating a "public data corporation" that will release data from its mapmaking agency Ordnance Survey (OS), the Met Office, Land Registry and perhaps Companies House from next April.
The move, part of the coalition's data release plans, amounts to a wholesale reorganisation of the largest "trading funds" ? government-owned companies which receive no direct funding ? dealing in data and information.
Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, acknowledged that the plans also include the possibility of selling part of the company to the private sector when it is created after April 2011.
That will cause unease among public sector unions and others concerned that the quality of essential services such as OS maps and weather forecasting could be compromised by private shareholders seeking profit by reducing quality on unprofitable areas.
Maude said that the initial aim was to create a central repository. "The idea is that it would be a corporation that would hold a large number of public datasets," he said. "Its principal objective is to enable us to release data on a uniform basis. Its second priority is to get synergy from bringing together different organisations, reducing overheads and getting operational expertise in collecting and managing and distributing data."
Maude would not be drawn on whether the corporation would make all its data available for free, or whether some would be charged for. He said that it was still "early days" for the project and that little had yet been decided ? despite the short timetable.
Trading funds cover their costs by charging for the data they sell or license both inside and outside government. Together, the four agencies have revenues of around �250m ? of which almost �80m came from licences charged to government until the OS changes last year.
The government's drive to make non-personal data freely available is in direct conflict with the trading fund model ? which led to a power struggle in Whitehall last year when Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, advised Gordon Brown, then the prime minister, to make OS map data available for free because of its essential nature for linking together other sets of data. Berners-Lee won after Brown found a compromise which means that OS is receiving funding from the Treasury for the first time as a trading fund.
The Cabinet Office indicated that it was setting up the corporation in its business plan published earlier this month in which it set April 2011 as the date for its creation. That says that it will work with the Shareholder Executive, which officially owns the trading funds, "to drive the release of core reference data for free re-use from the Public Data Corporation" between now and April.
The work is being done with the Treasury and the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/nov/19/government-public-data-corporation
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