The UK Government’s public sector data site launched last week in a private beta — and it’s using CKAN as its backend for storing all its dataset info!

They’ve got more than a 1000 existing data sets, from 7 departments, all brought together for the first time in a re-useable form. They’re eager to get feedback from developers and users on all aspects of the project — just head over and sign up to their google group.

All kudos here to the Digital Engagement team at the Cabinet Office who have done a great job in putting this together in a really short time. We’re also delighted that they’ve chosen to use CKAN (and Talis’ Connected Commons) as a key part of their infrastructure — not only for the obvious reasons but also because it shows such a clear commitment to working collaboratively with the wider open data community into the future.

Lastly for those wondering where are all those uk gov packages on CKAN: being a private beta no uk gov data packages will be showing up on the CKAN site at the moment — but we expect this to change just as soon as data.gov.uk goes officially public …