The Billion Pound-0-Gram (David Mcandless)

Governments and local authorities are starting to make their data available for re-use. Are we entering an new era of transparency?

• Obama launched data.gov, which offers feeds from various departments including the US defence department and Nasa.
• The UK government is opening its data on data.gov.uk. This is only about non-personal, non-sensitive data – information like the list of schools, crime rates or the performance of your council.
• … and soon Boris Johnson will open an online data warehouse with more than 200 data sets relevant to life in the capital.

Why is open data that exciting?

By accessing information, we can understand better how the world works. We can do wonderful things with data today by visualising them, mashing them up or turning them into online applications.

Not convinced? Check out those few links…

• The Guardian Datablog
• Information Is Beautiful
• List of online applications created with UK government data
• Designing The News

Still not convinced…

Watch Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created the World Wide Web, talking about the importance of unlocking and linking data.