Sir Tim Berners-Lee urges industry to realise the benefits of shared data

Berners Lee discusses the benefits of sharing data

Tim Berners-Lee, often described as the inventor of the internet, said in an interview last week that he hoped that industry would learn from the public sector and realise the benefits of sharing data.

To view the interview click here.

Berners-Lee is spearheading a government initiative to put state data online so that it can be re-used by developers and private enterprises.

The value of having government data out there will be huge. Lots of people in and around the UK government really understand the value of linked data. Its really exciting, he said.

Events such as Rewired State and foundations such as MySociety have showed that developers can create services that are beneficial to all much more cheaply than the government itself.

MySociety has already developed a service for people to find out simply how their MP has voted in parliament, while developers at a Rewired State event created a service that uses crime data to plot safe routes to schools.

Berners-Lee said he was astonished by the waveof innovation the internet had unleashed.

Im amazed by the diversity of stuff out there, the things that people think of and the creativity that they show when given a domain name and website to play with, he said.

As well as being Professor at MIT and Southampton Universities, Berners-Lee is also heavily involved with a number of organisations including the World Web Consortium of which he is a director, the Web Science Trust, and the Web Foundation.

The [Web] Foundation looks at how to ensure that the Web is available to all humanity, including the 80 per cent of the planet that does not yet have easy access or content to meet their needs, he said.

However, he added that there was still some way to go before the web became the collaborative design space that would allow problem solving that he had first envisioned.

Theres always been exciting things happening (on the web) and theres still a huge amount of challenge left, he said.

Last month Berners-Lee won the Computing / BCS award for outstanding contribution to IT.