Free data

The differences in the policy towards government IP in the US versus the UK has been well documented - some of the best examples include NASA's photos from Hubble, and many, many items from data.gov.

The general idea being that, as taxpayers, the American people own the data that they have paid for. What a great idea.

The UK is a luddite in comparison.

It seems that all our taxpayer's money has been used to bail out banks, so to get access to Ordnance Survey data costs a fair whack.

At the same time, I'm unsure what the Post Office is spending its money on (definitely not doing up its outlets, but maybe funding a few holidays for Roger Moore), as it charges for access to its postcode data and has issued notices to those using similar postcode services. I guess the Post Office is a fan of monopolies.

Rant over.

The government finally seems to be getting its act together with the launch of its Open Data Developers initiative, which is currently in beta with a Google group. By joining the group, you're provided with a login and password to the beta website. From what I've read on the Google group, SPARQL is the language used for querying the databases. Have a look at wikipedia or google it if you want to find out more.

I'm still exploring the site and the datasets available, but first impressions are very promising and it looks a lot easier to use IMHO than something like open.gov.uk which is well meaning, but a nightmare to use.

I'll write a few more posts once I've got my head around some of what is possible.