Government launches Open Data Institute (updated)

Huge opportunity to drive innovation via open data - but does the government truly understand the distinctions between 'open' and private?

The government's Open Data policy has taken a major step forward with the formal announcement of the Open Data Institute (ODI - theodi.org).

The institute is a new state-backed organisation that aims to provide an "incubator environment" to join up business, the public sector, academic institutions and developers and exploit the commercial potential of open data, while also working towards sustainable policy.

Whitehall's ODI strategy was outlined in November 2011, but last month the embryo organisation secured funding from the government's Technology Strategy Board, which may amount to £10m over the next five years.

The ODI is to develop a broad programme of events and strategies, including training open data entrepreneurs and backing innovative start-ups, and will be co-directed by two of open data's leading proponents, Professors Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt.

"The institute will connect together lots of people excited about open data," said Berners-Lee. "Those who produce it, with those who want to put it to use in all sorts of fields and every kind of industry."

Announcing the institute, Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude (pictured) confirmed what has long been implicit in government policy - the creation of what Computing has termed "the Data Bank of England": "We don't just want to lead the world in releasing government data. Our aim is to make the UK an international role model in exploiting the potential of open data to generate new businesses and stimulate growth," he said.

Universities and Science Minister David Willetts added: "We recognise the economic and social benefits of open data. That's why the government has been at the forefront of the open data movement. We are making more official information available than ever before.

"Data on areas like procurement, the quality of care homes and crime rates are already being used to provide innovative new services. Now, the Open Data Institute will support businesses that want to use data in imaginative new ways for everyone's benefit. This will release commercial potential, driving new forms of economic growth and new benefits to individuals."

Talk of care provision is of particular interest, given the publication this week of the Department of Health's information strategy, with its suggestion of the commercialisation of private data, and its sharing among ad hoc networks of public and private organisations.

That said, pharmaceutical research and medical advancement have always been focused on gathering open data and identifying trends, in order to provide care to specific people.

Talk of crime is another flashpoint for controversy, given the Metropolitan Police's new programme of examining data pulled from the mobile devices of suspects (rather than people who have been charged with a crime), and the increased use of private companies to supplement reduced police numbers.

The key question, then, is what is open and can be interrogated for everyone's benefit, via organisations such as the ODI (anonymised datasets about trends and behaviours, for example) and what is private, such as named individuals and their networks, contacts and personal choices.

Some councils and public bodies, including police forces, are already sharing data about named citizens across local boundaries in shared services centres - often in partnership with private suppliers - with the aim of meeting the government's reduced spending targets.

In some cases, what they are doing may be illegal. In other cases, legal grey areas seem to be ever expanding.

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Government launches Open Data Institute (updated)

Huge opportunity to drive innovation via open data - but does the government truly understand the distinctions between 'open' and private?

In isolated instances, the aim is not to provide more, or better, services, but the opposite: to identify "problem" people - who fail to pay council tax, for example - and withdraw services from them. A handful of councils, and some private companies, have been found to be spying on people in recent years.

It would be unfortunate, then, if the UK's emerging "open" data strategy - which has ambitious, respectable, socially advantageous aims - translates into a data free-for-all, with the aim of gathering as much data about identifiable people as possible.

With Berners-Lee's and Shadbolt's involvement, the ODI specifically has sound aims and unimpeachable credentials. There are massive opportunities for large, rich datasets to be analysed creatively, and for the information contained within them to be used in innovative ways to benefit society, and help spur economic recovery.

However, Berners-Lee has long been a critic of the government's snooping policies and its incursions into the territory of personal data. What is far from clear in this government's domestic policy overall is whether Whitehall truly understands the distinctions between 'open' and private.

Home Secretary Theresa May's recent comments in the tabloid press about the need to monitor all citizens' communications to identify paedophiles and terrorists smacked of hysteria, of treating everyone as a potential criminal.

Also unclear is whether Whitehall truly supports openness, beyond the potential of key datasets to make money for private enterprise and, presumably, the government - which appears to be creating a role for itself as broker of open and private data about its citizens.

The Information Commissioner's recent comments about Health Secretary Andrew Lansley's suppression of the risk assessment report on his NHS reforms suggested that the Freedom of Information Act might need to be rewritten to take into account the government's sometimes fluid interpretation of the law.

Just as important, the public sector also needs to demonstrate that it can effectively secure all this data - something that it has sometimes failed to do in recent years.

David Bott is director of Innovation Programmes for the ODI's backer, the Technology Strategy Board. He told Computing that the government is "leading the change" worldwide, both in terms of making government data available and exploiting open data commercially.

The government, he said, is "determined to do the right thing" and to get the balance right between open and private data usage.

"Part of the opportunity of open data is to understand what the government needs to regulate.

"Using data against the purpose for which it is gathered would be illegal. What we need to do is to understand that balance," said Bott.

But then he added: "If you expect to delay everything until you are certain that you have got it right, then we'll be left behind. If we sit around until we are completely certain, then we won't have an industry in this country.

"People often voluntarily give up their privacy or rights in exchange for something better."

• Updated: From September 2012, the ODI will become a physical venue. The Technology Strategy Board has confirmed to Computing that it will be based at the UK's tech hub in Shoreditch.