Web inventor to help Downing Street open up government data
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, will help the British government to make its data more easily available online, Gordon Brown said today.
"So that government information is accessible and useful for the widest possible group of people, I have asked Sir Tim Berners-Lee who led the creation of the world wide web, to help us drive the opening up of access to Government data in the web over the coming month," the Prime Minister said in a statement about electoral and Parliamentary reform.
Sir Tim has been an eager proponent of better access to all forms of government and other data. In a talk to the TED conference in March, (Video here), he said: "What you find if you deal with people in government departments is that they hug their database, hold it really close, so that they can build a beautiful website to present it.
"I would like to suggest: sure, make a beautiful website, but first, give us – all of us – the unadulterated data. We have to ask for raw data now."
The government is known to be working on the creation of a central data source from which all sorts of government data could be accessed, as has been introduced by the Obama administration in the US.
Sir Tim was also critical of the obstacles that national governments put in the way of easy access to data. "You have no idea of about the excuses people come up with to keep data out of your hands, even when you as taxpayers have paid for it," he told the TED talk.
Sir Tim originally devised the technologies behind the world wide web in the early 90s while working at the particle collider laboratory at Cern in Switzerland: he was trying to devise a method that would allow researchers to get easy access to documents for a future project they were working on - the Large Hadron Collider, which finally began operation last autumn.
Charles Arthur
Wednesday 10 June 2009 14.07 BST
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, will help the British government to make its data more easily available online, Gordon Brown said today.
"So that government information is accessible and useful for the widest possible group of people, I have asked Sir Tim Berners-Lee who led the creation of the world wide web, to help us drive the opening up of access to Government data in the web over the coming month," the Prime Minister said in a statement about electoral and Parliamentary reform.
Sir Tim has been an eager proponent of better access to all forms of government and other data. In a talk to the TED conference in March, (Video here), he said: "What you find if you deal with people in government departments is that they hug their database, hold it really close, so that they can build a beautiful website to present it.
"I would like to suggest: sure, make a beautiful website, but first, give us – all of us – the unadulterated data. We have to ask for raw data now."
The government is known to be working on the creation of a central data source from which all sorts of government data could be accessed, as has been introduced by the Obama administration in the US.
Sir Tim was also critical of the obstacles that national governments put in the way of easy access to data. "You have no idea of about the excuses people come up with to keep data out of your hands, even when you as taxpayers have paid for it," he told the TED talk.
Sir Tim originally devised the technologies behind the world wide web in the early 90s while working at the particle collider laboratory at Cern in Switzerland: he was trying to devise a method that would allow researchers to get easy access to documents for a future project they were working on - the Large Hadron Collider, which finally began operation last autumn.
Charles Arthur
Wednesday 10 June 2009 14.07 BST
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
