Today marks a watershed moment in UK government digital policy. With the launch of data.gov.uk, the government has instantly become more accountable, more transparent and more democratic. Finally the huge amount of data generated by the public sector has being harnessed in such a way that it becomes of real use to citizens like you and me, through the medium of web-based apps.

Data.gov.uk will host a growing number of datasets covering all aspects of public sector performance. These can be used to:

• Build web applications that make useful information accessible and relevant to anyone.
• Examine the performance of public sector services both nationally and regionally.
• Create visualisations that accurately illustrate how social issues affect different areas and groups across the UK.

Data Visualisation has been a tactic I’ve been advocating to clients throughout 2009. In a world where we are all bombarded with information on a constant basis, visualising large amounts of data in one diagram can often help you cut through the noise around your chosen subject and instantly get your audience to understand your point.

Here’s an example: how confused are you about the differences between the parties in the upcoming election? Most people can grasp that the biggest issue facing the economy is our national deficit and how to cut it, but if you were to listen to Brown, Cameron and Clegg waffle on about “real terms increases” and “public spending efficiency savings” it would take you a fair while to work out what their real policies were. Instead, why not look at the visualisation below culled from party policy documents? It certainly helped me get a clearer idea of who I’d vote for.




The other great reason for making this data public is the applications it can power. The government has realised it will make more progress by crowdsourcing the development of these rather than by paying for them to be built. Some great examples such as ‘PlanningAlerts’ already appear on data.gov.uk, and some other ideas of ways to use government data can be found here.

Credit to MPs like Richard Allan and Tom Watson who pushed for this sort of approach to be adopted by the civil service and have worked to make it a reality. With this agenda receiving nothing but rave reviews from the tech media and now also mainstream outlets, it’s not hard to envisage a world 5 years from now in which open data (not just from government but from private companies as well) shapes news stories, informs our everyday decisions and allows real political dividing lines to be drawn for all to see on the issues of the day.

Releasing datasets, doing data visualisation and building apps are all great ways of driving online PR and building inbound links to your site: this has obvious knock-on benefits for SEO etc. Get in touch if you want to know more.

BBC blog on the same topic here