UK Government invests 10 million GBP to growing Open data Institute

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Open Data institute is a soon to be launched open source initiative in Data sharing domain. It will be funded by the community (non-profitable institution) created to provide training to new businesses and parties in reference to handling large amounts of data. This organization also acts as a protective shield for all new business startups, willing to access the useful information that is published by the government.

The initiative behind the institute is to create the ecosystem to bring massive public data into public access, so that business can gain from it. The institute proposes to incubate, nurture, and mentor new businesses from using and exploiting the Open Data to drive economic growth. It promotes the proposal by the UK government’s policy on Access of Open Data. This institute shall be situated at Shoreditch in the Tech City of East London. The current business opening for the institute is scheduled to be September 2012. The institute is the brain child of technologist who has innately carries the concept of FOSS, World Wide Web and HTML inventor- Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The institute aims in advising businesses about how to make the most of the government data available.

The U.K government, like many other ruling governments has set up and established an open to public data store by which individuals and new businesses can get and access some information from the official sources. The first announcement regarding this institute was officially made in November 2011. This initiative was taken by George Osborne, UK’s chancellor of Exchequer in his autumn statement. There were several economic and political reasons behind this decision for opening up and using government owned data. Easy access to the public sectorinformation helped in catalyzing new markets and innovative services and products.

This step also improved the transparency and standards for all the public services provided. Transport and health and weather sectors were the most prominent ones whose data was first opened. This step helped in kick-starting the business and novel applications. The institute also aims to advice businesses about the best way to use and extract the information they have internally.

Over a span of five years the U.K government is planning to provide a fund of up to 10 million pounds for the establishment of this unique Open Data Institute. This step is taken in collaboration with the Technology Strategy Board. The institute however hopes to receive a similar and matched funding through the private sector or in précis with the help of donations, research grants and corporate sponsorships.

The institute management also plans a Public Data Group and a Data Strategy Board in order to make the best use of the data from the Land registry, the Ordinance Survey Department, the Met office and the Companies House. This fact reveals that the data extracted from the Land Registry will include the prices of the residential properties sold out. The data available from the Transport Department will include the schedules of buses and trains, highway and traffic data, performance related to the aviation service providers and even the rail prices. This institute thus supports new businesses with the urge to use the data present in an imaginative and constructive way for everyone’s benefit. It advices people on new and creative ideas to pick up the desired data and make the most of it.

Open Data Institute is expected to be as important as WWW and HTML are to today’s world carrying on the torch of open source philosophy to the next level.

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