Conservatives Pledge to Open 20 Most Socially Useful Datasets

Thanks to a pointer from the ever-aware Julian Todd we’re heartened to see these pledges being made at the Conservative Party Conference in the UK:

• Use open source software as much as possible
• Publish on a website details of all government spending over £25,000. [ed: great news for Where Does My Money Go]
• Allow the public to comment on all legislation before it is debated in depth by MPs and peers.
• Publish online 20 of the most socially useful government datasets within 12 months of a General Election.
• All government contacts over £10,000 being tendered by the government would also be online.
• Fewer mega-projects; a rigid insistence on open standards and inter-operability; a level playing field for open source software and for smaller suppliers.

Interested in having a say what those “20 most socially useful government datasets” should be? You can actually do so right now, courtesy of the Office of Public Sector Information’s data unlocking service.

OPSI has been quietly offering the public the chance to make and vote on unlocking requests over the last six months. So if you have a moment head over and make a request or vote on an existing one.

Related posts:

1. Cofundos – ‘community innovation and funding’ Recently the Agile Knowledge and Semantic Web research group (AKSW) at Universität Leipzig launched Cofundos.org. Confundos aims to help people share, refine, fund and realise new ideas for open software and knowledge projects. It was founded and developed by Sören...
2. Data.gov goes live! The US governments new data.gov site (which we blogged about last month) is now live! There are currently a selection of core datasets available – from information about World Copper Smelters to results from the Residential Energy Consumption Survey. Raw...
3. What features should be included in a catalogue of open government data? There have recently been several posts about what features are desirable in government data catalogues. The Sunlight Foundation recently announced they are planning to build on data.gov to allow “community participation so that people can submit their own data sources”...