This morning the Prime Minister launched Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government. You can read his speech on the No. 10 website
The document sets out plans for strengthening the role of citizens and civic society; recasting the relationships between the centre and the frontline and between the citizen and the State; and streamlining government. It is the culmination of work carried out across the public sector over the past year, including the Power of Information Taskforce Report, and thanks are given for the vision and advice received from industry leaders and distinguished public sector thinkers - including Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt on radically opening up publicly held data to promote transparency.
A major theme of "Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government" is radically opening up data and public information to promote transparent and effective government and social innovation. Significant announcements on the Public Data theme include:
Establishing Public Data Principles
- Public data will be published in reusable, machine-readable form
- Public data will be available and easy to find through a single easy to use online access point (http://www.data.gov.uk/)
- Public data will be published using open standards and following the recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium
- Any 'raw' dataset will be re-presented in linked data form
- More public data will be released under an open licence which enables free reuse, including commercial reuse
- Data underlying the Government's own websites will be published in reusable form for others to use
- Personal, classified, commercially sensitive and third-party data will continue to be protected
Opening up specific datasets and promoting transparency
The Government will release valuable public datasets and making them free for re-use, including:
- Releasing health data such as the NHS Choices data
- Consulting on making Ordnance Survey mapping and postcode datasets available for free reuse from April 2010
- Increasing access to and reuse of public transport data including the National Public Transport Access Node database, with information available to the development community by April 2010
- Opening Met Office Public Weather Service data to include: releasing significant underlying data for weather forecasts for free download and reuse by April 2010, and working to further expand the release of weather data, while recognising all public safety considerations; and making available more information on Met Office scientists, their work and scientific papers, free of charge
- Publishing, by spring 2010, details of how the fiscal stimulus announced in the Pre-Budget Report 2008 has been spent, disaggregated to local level
- Launching a public consultation early in 2010 to seek views on how we could publish further financial data so that it is user-friendly and accessible, with a view to putting a live system in place by summer 2010
- Integrating ONS data with http://www.data.gov.uk/ from January 2010.
Encompassing local government and the wider public sector
- The Government will encourage local government to release local public data and make it free for reuse, and establish an open-platform local data exchange. Professor Nigel Shadbolt will lead a local public data panel to ensure that data are linked effectively across local authorities, the Local Government Association, government departments and agencies.
- The Prime Minister said that "there are many hundreds more datasets that can be opened up - not only from central government but also from local councils, the NHS, police and education authorities."
- More details about the Local Public Data Panel.
Actively publishing comparative data
The Government will make it easier to compare performance across frontline services, by publishing data on public service performance, citizen outcomes and value for money in achieving those outcomes. This data will be published in reusable form on www.data.gov.uk by 2011. Specifically this means that:
- In local government we will work with the sector to develop comparable measures of value for money across a range of local government services. We will consult on these from spring 2010 and publish them in 2011.
- In the health sector, we will publish hospital-trust-level reference costs for specific treatment categories (or healthcare resource groups) online in early 2010.
- In education, we will publish as much data as possible from the National Pupil Database and other sources that is relevant and compatible with preserving individual anonymity from April 2010 onwards.
- In the criminal justice system, we will benchmark offender management in prisons and probation during 2010, and benchmark the whole of the prison and probation system, by the end of 2011.
- For police force performance, we will publish quarterly 12-month moving average crime data at police authority level, by 2010, and develop value for money data which will enable comparison of forces’ costs and productivity.
"Raw data now"
Some of the data promised today will not be available for a few months. However to go alongside the launch we've been working with the data teams around Whitehall to put another 146 raw data sets live on our developer preview data site right now.
Finally as the Prime Minister said this morning:
“Releasing data can and must unleash the innovation and entrepreneurship at which Britain excels - one of the most powerful forces of change we can harness.”
