Open Data and Open Government in the UK: How Closely are They Related?
Martin De Saulles School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK mrd @ brighton. ac. uk
Abstract: Over the previous decade a number of initiatives within European Union( EU) Member States, in particular the UK, have attempted to open up access to public sector data for broader economic and social uses. Driving some of these initiatives has been the ambition to increase the transparency of public bodies and, as a result, improve the democratic process. Other initiatives have had an economic agenda that see the opening up of public sector data for commercial exploitation as a way to stimulate economic activity and growth. In the UK, the launch of the data. gov. uk website in 2010 combines both these ambitions by making over 8,000 public data sets available for third parties to download and build information services on top of. This paper examines a sample of these data sets as well as some of the applications that have been developed from them and uses a conceptual model developed by Yu and Robinson( 2012) in the US. The model provides a basis for determining the technical characteristics of the data( is it adaptable or inert) as well as the primary purpose of the data( is it to improve service delivery or public accountability). Based on the analysis of the sample of data sets from the data. gov. uk website, it is concluded that Yu and Robinson’ s framework provides a useful basis for separating the technical characteristics of public data from the purposes to which they can be put. Further refinements of the model are suggested that would allow governments to benchmark their public data initiatives against programmes in other countries.
Keywords: e‐government, open data, open government
1. Introduction
Notions of open government can be traced back to the 18 th century with Sweden’ s constitutional legislation enabling a free press and revolutions in the United States( US) and France which had the ambition of curbing executive and legislative powers at their core. More recently, the United States Freedom of Information Act in 1966 and similar legislation across Europe since the 1970s have attempted to uphold the principle that providing greater access to information about the workings of the state is good for democracy. The United Kingdom( UK) can be seen as something of a laggard in this area, only passing its own Freedom of Information Act in 2000. While these pieces of legislation have made it easier for citizens and organisations to access government information resources at both local and national levels, it could be argued that they have not gone far enough in opening up the public sector to greater scrutiny. Most legislation forces public bodies to be responsive in the ways they provide access in that they deliver the information in response to requests from individuals. There have also been restrictions, particularly in Europe as to what those receiving the information could then do with it. While in the US there has been a tradition of allowing the private sector to freely commercialise public information assets, in Europe the commercial exploitation of public information has, until recently, been restricted( De Saulles 2007). A 2003 European Directive( 2003 / 98 / EC) has attempted to open up the European public information market but the response across the EU has been mixed( Janssen 2011). The UK has been one of the more enthusiastic implementers of this directive and enacted many aspects of it with the passing of national legislation in 2005 and the creation of an organisational infrastructure to manage its implementation.
More recently, there has been a growing realisation that legislation on its own is not sufficient to encourage a thriving market for the commercial and social exploitation of public data. The ways that the data can be accessed and the formats it is presented in will play a large part in what third parties can do with it( Berners‐ Lee 2009). This paper explores some of the issues and debates surrounding the relationship between open data and open government and, in particular, the data. gov. uk initiative in the UK. The results of an analysis of a subset of the data contained within the data. gov. uk service are presented and discussed using the framework devised by Yu and Robinson( 2012) which provides a basis for describing both the technical nature of government data as well as the purposes to which it can be put.
160