I’ve blogged about open spatial data several times in the past and about the contribution of spatial data to the national economy.
In June of this year the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that in order to ensure 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.” This seems to have been driven by examples such as data.gov implemented by the Obama Administration in the US as well as the issues around MPs’ expense claims. The Prime Minister just had another meeting with Tim Berners-Lee who briefed the Cabinet about progress toward the goal of delivering a single online access point to Government information and proposals to extend the open data approach. To support this the government’s announced plan is to ensure broadband access for all UK households by 2012 and build a nationwide high-speed broadband network by 2016. According to the 2008 ITIF Broadband Rankings broadband penetration in the UK is 13th worldwide slightly behind the US.
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