Billy Tompson: Public data corporation: end of our world or just the beginning?

The Public Data Corporation was only announced two days ago and already data campaigners are concerned

Announced to Downing Street fanfare on Wednesday, the new Public Data Corporation is already worrying the key voices of the open data community - largely because no-one knows what it's for.

Writing on his Countculture blog today, Chris Taggart points out that:

none of the open data activists and developers that I've spoken to knows what it is, or what the real motivation is, and remember these are the people who did much to get us into a place where the UK government has declared that the public has a 'Right To Data' and that the excellent 'Open Government Licence' should be the default licence.

And Martin Moore of the Media Standards Trust tweets today that

People right to be sceptical abt Public Data Corporation - says @countculture http://ow.ly/3DQ9t > supporters of #opendata must get stuck in

Taggart adds that it's significant that the announcement comes by way of BIS, regarded as being a little tardy on the open data front by campaigners:

My sources tell me the proposal in fact originated from BIS, and thus could be seen as an attempt by the incumbents to co-opt the open data agenda, as a way of shutting it down, smothering it if you like

The official release makes it sound vague, but reassuring. Business minister Edward Davey from BIS says that :

It will provide stability and certainty for businesses and entrepreneurs, attracting the investment these operations need to maintain their capabilities and drive growth in the economy. It will also give better value for the taxpayer by driving down costs and making the process more efficient

And Francis Maude, a champion of open data under the Liberal-Conservative coalition government, says it's about "maximising the benefits" of opening up public data:

At present many state agencies face a conflict between maximising revenues from the sale of data and making the data freely available to be exploited for social and economic gain. Creating the PDC will enable the conflicts at the least to be managed consistently with a view to opening up access, and at best to be eliminated

However MySociety's Tom Steinberg - very much a part of the government's transparency agenda as member of the Public Sector Transparency Board - wrote on the MySociety bulletin board that it could go either way:

This change could be good, or bad ? I don't think the changes could be neutral. This is because in my view the current situation is so crappy that 'no change' would definitely be bad.
If you're a natural cynic, you'll just say the government has already decided to flog everything off to the highest bidder. If you adopt that position, and give up without a fight, the people in Whitehall and the trading funds who want to do that will almost certainly win.
However, if you believe me when I say things are finely balanced, that either side could win, and enough well-organised external pressure could really make a difference over the next year, then you won't just bitch, you'll get stuck in.
I give up some of my time almost every week to fight this fight, and so do people like Michael Cross and Charles Arthur [co-founders of the Free our Data campaign]. But getting the PDC to be the thing hackers need it to be will take more than that - it'll take real grassroots pressure, and a pinch of luck.

ComputerWorld's Glyn Moody is also sceptical, or at least agnostic:

[Open data] is actually part of a wider move towards a more transparent, collaborative form of democracy - and that implies seeking input from anyone interested before making major decisions. That's particularly important for a body that calls itself the Public Data Corporation: we need to know just how open, and just how public it will really be

Here at the Datablog we will try to get to the bottom of this over the next few weeks. Because it sounds like we don't have much time. Taggart finishes his piece with a call to arms: