The Government is planning a big data giveaway in an attempt to encourage new ventures based on innovative ways of using it.

The plans appear in a report published yesterday, Putting the Front Line First, which is mainly concerned with improving Government efficiency and delivering services better.
 
But the report also raises the issue of making better use of Government data by making it available free or at low cost. According to the Financial Times today , a range of Ordnance Survey, Met Office, public transport and postcode data will be made available.
 
The move, encouraged by Government advisers Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt, Professor of Artifical Intelligence at Southampton University, will mean breaking existing contracts for the sale of the data. The Ordnance Survey currently makes £110 million a year from sales of data, and the Met Office £90 million.
 
The belief is that making data freely available, or at marginal cost, will encourage entrepreneurs to make use of it in a variety of ways. A study carried out for the Treasury by Cambridge University suggests that products worth far more than the cost of the basic data can be generated – as much as £160 million in the first year alone . It gives as an example the “multi-billion dollar" weather derivatives industry that has developed in the US since access to weather informnation became cheap. 
 
Other possible applications include putting live traffic informnation in Google maps, and cheaper GPS applications.