Our taxes fund the collection of public data - yet we pay again to access it. Make the data freely available to stimulate innovation, argue Charles Arthur and Michael Cross
Thursday March 9, 2006
The Guardian
Imagine you had bought this newspaper for a friend. Imagine you asked them to tell you what's in the TV listings - and they demanded cash before they would tell you. Outrageous? Certainly. Yet that is what a number of government agencies are doing with the data that we, as taxpayers, pay to have collected on our behalf. You have to pay to get a useful version of that data. Think of Ordnance Survey's (OS) mapping data: useful to any business that wanted to provide a service in the UK, yet out of reach of startup companies without deep pockets.
This situation prevails across a number of government agencies. Its effects are all bad. It stifles innovation, enterprise and the creativity that should be the lifeblood of new business. And that is why Guardian Technology today launches a campaign - Free Our Data. The aim is simple: to persuade the government to abandon copyright on essential national data, making it freely available to anyone, while keeping the crucial task of collecting that data in the hands of taxpayer-funded agencies.
One government makes the data it collects available free to all: the United States. It is no accident that it is also the country that has seen the rise of multiple mapping services (such as Google Maps, Microsoft's MapPoint and Yahoo Maps) and other services - "mashups" - that mesh government-generated data with information created by the companies. The US takes the attitude that data collected using taxpayers' money should be provided to taxpayers free. And a detailed study shows that the UK's closed attitude to its data means we lose out on commercial opportunities, and even hold back scientific research in fields such as climate change.
Who are the culprits? Besides OS, with its vast and valuable map data, there are the UK Hydrographic Office (which collects tidal and naval navigational data), the Highways Agency (which collects traffic data) and even the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting.
Britain's public sector information is held by some 400 government departments, agencies and local authorities. Assets range from wills dating back to 1858, house values recorded in the Land Registry, maps and the risk of flooding to individual homes. Much is of great commercial interest, especially when it can be presented on innovative websites such as upmystreet.com. These sets of data are the modern crown jewels - but instead of treating them as a resource to boost national wealth, the government locks them up, restricting access to those who pay.
The heart of our argument is twofold. First, the government should not run businesses. The civil service is too inflexible to cope with the speed of change in the commercial sector. If a company like Microsoft finds it difficult to adjust to a world of online applications, how much harder is it for a government department rooted in paper-based processes?
Second, the government should be charged with collecting the best data. The Office for National Statistics labours to collect the most accurate depiction of Britain's society and economy. No private organisation has the resources, time or breadth of approach. By contrast, commercial companies ignore less profitable sectors: we can't trust data collected by banks about spending habits because they ignore people who cannot afford to open accounts. Similarly, few companies make detailed maps of Britain; they concentrate on the areas with the best returns.
In a seminal piece of research into the real cost of charging for access to public data, the late Peter Weiss, of the US National Weather Service, compared open and closed economic models for public sector data. His paper, Borders in Cyberspace: Conflicting Public Sector Information Policies and their Economic Impact, is online (http://tinyurl.com/cby55). He quoted a 2000 study for the European Commission carried out by Pira International, which noted that "the concept of commercial companies being able to acquire, at very low cost, quantities of public sector information and resell it for a variety of unregulated purposes to make a profit is one that policymakers in the EU find uncomfortable." But why?
Pira pointed out that the US's approach brings enormous economic benefits. The US and EU are comparable in size and population; but while the EU spent €9.5bn (L6.51bn) on gathering public sector data, and collected €68bn selling and licensing it, the US spent €19bn - twice as much - and realised €750bn - over 10 times more. Weiss pointed out: "Governments realise two kinds of financial gain when they drop charges: higher indirect tax revenue from higher sales of the products that incorporate the ... information; and higher income tax revenue and lower social welfare payments from net gains in employment.