Government not doing enough with data it holds - TechUK

Government is just putting data out there and waiting to see what people do with it because it doesn't have a clue, says TechUK director

The government isn't doing enough to make the most of the data it has at its disposal, according to TechUK, the trade association that counts more than 850 companies as its members.

Sureyya Cansoy, a director at TechUK, said that different industries were at different points of their journeys in making the most out of data, with retail and transport ahead of other sectors.

She said that it was "fantastic" that the UK government had understood the importance of the topic - citing the Open Data Initiative (ODI) as an important step in making public sector data available for others to use free of charge. However, she claimed that it is the next step that the government has not quite grasped so far.

"The next step is how they would use data analytics techniques to make sure that government departments and agencies work better, and are able to deliver better public services to citizens," Cansoy said.

Cansoy added that the government seems to be "putting a lot of data out there, but waiting to see how others use that data".

"They're not really investing in making use of the data internally," she said.

One example of this, Cansoy suggested, was the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which made 8,000 data sets available a few months ago.

"That's a massive amount of data, but they're just putting it out there and waiting to see what people do with it because they don't know what to do with it [themselves]," she said.

Cansoy aired her views as part of a Pure Storage event earlier this week. Pure Storage revealed its research during the event, which found that almost three-quarters of companies admit to collecting data but never using it.