Open data

• What is open data?
• Local Public Data Panel
• Open Elections Data project
• Knowledge Hub and Lichfield District Council case study
• 'Make it Local' digital community services campaign

What is open data?

The idea behind open data is that information held by government should be freely available to use and re-mix by the public. It’s a movement to make non-personal data:

• open so that it can be turned into useful applications
• support transparency and accountability
• make sharing data between public sector partners more efficient.

The government is committed to making much more public data openly available. On 22 March 2010, the Prime Minister announced that the government was going to:

“...use digital technology to open up data with the aim of providing every citizen in Britain with true ownership and accountability over the services they demand from government.”

Current and planned initiatives include:

• data.gov.uk, which is a single, easy-to-use website for access to 3,000 public data sets
• the Office for National Statistics (ONS) opening up access to over two billion data items at the local neighbourhood level.

In March 2010, the Department for Transport (DfT) and the transport industry shared the datasets for all 350,000 bus stops, railway stations and airports in Britain. On 1 April 2010, a substantial package of information held by the Ordnance Survey was made available to the general public.

From Autumn 2010, the government plans to publish online an inventory of all non-personal datasets held by departments and arm's-length bodies, with the programme managed by the National Archives.

But this is an agenda which has been embraced by all political parties.

The emphasis to date has been on opening up central government data and local government will be one of the key beneficiaries of sharing this data. It will help councils have access to and combine local information to shape priorities, drive efficiencies and inform local people.

Local Public Data Panel

There is an increasing expectation that local government will need to share its non-personal data, too. The Local Public Data Panel has been drawn together with leading practitioners from the sector and representation from the Local Government Association (LGA). It is chaired by Professor Nigel Shadbolt and will:

• champion the release of local public data and information sharing
• accelerate progress in agreeing common standards for data released into the public sphere
• make local public services better understood and more accessible.

About the Local Public Data Panel – on the data.gov.uk website

Open Elections Data project

As part of this work, the Open Elections Data project was one way that councils holding elections got involved in the open data agenda. This project focused on helping councils to share election results information in an open data format so that for the first time there is a comprehensive, open and free data source on local results. A document detailing the key lessons learned from the project can be found below.

About the Open Elections Data project – on the Open Election Data website

Open Elections Data - lessons learned (PDF, 7 pages, 75KB)

Knowledge Hub and Lichfield District Council case study

Through the Knowledge Hub programme – a project aiming to create an online trusted learning and sharing environment – Local Government Improvement and Development has published a case study on Lichfield’s use of open data. It includes more information on the open data movement and how councils can get involved in the Open Elections project.

Lichfield District Council case study – on the WorkTogether website

About the Knowledge Hub – on the Local Government Group website

'Make it Local' digital community services campaign

From July 2010, local authorities will have the chance to collaborate with digital media developers to provide their communities with innovative, web-based services. This is part of a new project run by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA).

The project, called ‘Make it Local’, is designed to encourage councils to release publicly-owned data in a linked way and for developers to build new services around the information. Three council-developer partnerships will be selected on the basis of their proposals and the impact their project can have on the local community.

About 'Make it Local' – on the NESTA website