Look out for a barrage of new UK applications hitting the web anytime soon based on the non-personal data now being made available by the UK Government on http://data.gov.uk
It’s a bold and in my opinion welcome move which will open up more data than even the U.S. government holds at its Data.gov.
The site was officially launched last week by Web creator Sir Tim Berners Lee and been has been running for the last six months in beta with almost 3,000 data sets available. By contrast, the U.S. site Data.gov, has less than 1,000 data sets.
So far over 2,400 developers have registered to test the site and 10 applications built. These include PlanningAlerts, a free service that emails you if someone has put in a planning application to build near your house and FillThatHole, which lets people report potholes and other road hazards across the UK.
It promises to be a great resource for developers especially independents who struggle to get or afford reliable data.
Not often we have something to say well done to the government about these days, so credit where credit is due. this is a great move.
