Chancellor George Osborne has announced a raft of measures in his Autumn Statement , including the establishment of an Open Data Institute, to make public sector data more freely available.
Information relating to healthcare, travel, weather forecasting and house prices will be among the first to be freed up in a move designed to create growth and jobs in UK industry.
The Cabinet Office is creating a Data Strategy Board made up of data users, which will be responsible for public sector contracts with the Public Data Group. It will also have up to £7m over the next three years to spend on making more data freely available.
Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, world wide web inventor, and Professor Nigel Shadbolt of Southampton University will jointly head the Open Data Institute in London’s Silicon Roundabout. The Institute will “innovate, exploit and research open data opportunities with business and academia”.
The NHS is announcing new data releases which will help the healthcare research industry and academia to develop new products and services to aid advances in medical diagnosis and treatment.
Datasets from primary and secondary care will be linked by the NHS, providing health service, pharmaceutical and other professionals with information about the journeys of patients through the care system and the outcomes of different treatments.
The UK is one of the few countries to have a universal cradle to grave health system. It can boast some of the most detailed, anonymised information on patients, says the Cabinet Office, and has the potential to lead the world as a location for data-enabled health research.
"We are committed to making this Government a world leader in transparency and have made a wealth of data available for the first time to improve performance in public services and drive growth as applications of the data are developed,” said a Downing Street spokesperson.
“New commitments this week will truly open up health data, as we have seen with the Dr Foster report, to drive up standards for patients, improve effectiveness of care and ensure we deliver a world class health service."
The Met Office will, for the first time, release a large proportion of the public weather service forecast and real-time observations as machine-readable data under the Open Government Licence (OGL) for unrestricted use, enabling them to be used by application developers.
The Chancellor also announced that the Department for Transport (DfT) will work with Network Rail and the transport industry to make real-time train running data available from April 2012. At the same time DfT expects to release the ‘Next Buses API’ of planned and real-time information relating to 350,000 bus stops in Great Britain.
Local highway authorities will release information that they hold on local roads and associated road works by end of 2012 to allow developers to release apps on smart phones and the web. Making this data available will mean that it can be used by companies to manage a workforce of public transport commuters better and also will help with planning for local authorities.
“Better information about roads will mean that people will be able to make more efficient decisions about car journeys and could help with congestion. The economic cost of inefficient travel and transport is high, costing small and large businesses alike in lost productivity. It can be mitigated by open access to real time timetabling data,” says the Cabinet Office.
From March 2012 the Land Registry will make available ‘price paid information’ showing all residential property sales in England and Wales at address level. The data will be downloadable for re-use under the OGL and updated monthly.
As more details of the Statement are revealed we will publish further analysis.
'''Kanclerz skarbu Wielkiej Brytanii George Osborne w ubiegły wtorek przedstawił inicjatywę, której celem jest otwarcie dostępu do danych rządowych. Będzie to możliwe dzięki sfinansowaniu Open Data Institute, na który rząd wyłożyć chce kilka milionów funtów.'''

Open Data Institute ma powstać we wschodnim Londynie i ma być kierowany przez Tima Bernersa-Lee oraz Nigela Shadbolta z Uniwersytetu Southampton. Udostępnione zostaną dane dotyczące m.in. transportu kolejowego i drogowego, meteorologii oraz opieki zdrowotnej. 

Media cytują wypowiedź Osborne'a: