Data.gov.uk – Making Public Data public

Speech by: Stephen Timms MP
Venue: Guardian News and Media, London

I am delighted to be here today to launch the “beta” of data.gov.uk. We promised this in Smarter Government; today we deliver it, with over 2,500 data sets.

Government Data

Government has a unique role in the data economy. We gather definitive reference information across a huge number of different areas. If you want to know:

• whether or not a company exists;
• whether it is solvent;
• or whether the products it is selling are safe for consumers

we hold that data. If you need to know

• whether the house you about to buy is built correctly;
• whether it is prone to flooding;
• or whether it is handy for the buses;

We have data on those too.

If you want to know how many fish there are in the English channel, I am reliably informed that we have data about that.

What’s more, as the Prime Minister identified in his Liberty speech back in October 2007 – “Public information does not belong to Government, it belongs to the public on whose behalf government is conducted”.

Read the full speech on the BIS website