It’s been an exciting year for open data.

www.data.gov.uk was launched in January 2010 to provide a way in to government data. In May David Cameron wrote to all Government departments setting deadlines for publishing data. He specified that ‘from July 2010, government departments and agencies should ensure that any information published includes the underlying data in an open, standardised format’. In June, the newly-established Public Sector Transparency Board, with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt as board members, set out their draft principles including that public data will be published in re-usable, machine-readable form.

Since launch more than 4,000 datasets have been listed on www.data.gov.uk. But this is only the starting point. The real challenge is to publish those datasets as open, linked data to enable relationships to be made with other data. Enriching content and transforming it into formats such as RDF, XML and JSON; using URIs effectively; and publishing data through a RESTful API enables that data to be re-used in more innovative ways.

You can read Jeni Tennison’s blog on the subject for more information http://www.tso.co.uk/documents/LinkedData.pdf

At TSO we have been working with public sector organisations to open up their data and publish it as linked data. We have developed www.london-gazette.co.uk and www.legislation.gov.uk based on open linked data principles to enable the information to be re-used.

We’ve also developed a range of tools and services that will help government to open up their data and to help developers re-use that data - you can read about these in the OpenUp Platform section.

TSO’s OpenUp Challenge

Last year we launched the OpenUp challenge, encouraging ideas for how government data could be re-used to benefit communities both locally, and nationwide. On 23 March 2011 we held the OpenUp Final where Professor Nigel Shadbolt announced the winner.

View the video news report, press release, pictures and seminar videos from our guest speakers