An open letter to Vince Cable

Dear Mr Cable

I read with interest yesterday your letter to the Prime Minister about some of the issues facing the UK in the future, and in particular the need for a vision and for a connected approach across government. This struck me as timely and useful, as it hopefully signalled the intention of a change in policy at one of the main roadblocks to innovation in improving government and fostering innovation.

I am referring to the policy of your own department – the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – to restricting access to core reference datasets, such as the Ordnance Survey mapping data, postcodes, and company data, and thus not just stifling innovation and growth but preventing a consistent and connected approach across government.

Though much about the future is unclear one thing is certain, that we are increasingly living in a data world. In that world innovation – and democracy – depends on the ability to access and reuse data, particularly the core reference data on which other data is based: what area a postcode refers to, where something is located, who runs and owns the companies for which we work or which receive government money.

In fact, opening non-personal government data forms part of the government’s growth agenda, and it has already published a considerable amount. Yet much of this data is almost useless without the core reference to tie it together – data which is under the control of your department.

When I met with your then junior minister Ed Davey a couple of months ago on this subject, I asked him point blank whether the government was going to publish huge amounts of data under a licence which allowed free reuse, but was going to restrict access to the core datasets which tied these together, that were in fact the core infrastructure for our digital world? He said, ‘We’ve got some ideas for innovative charging models.’

Let’s put aside the fact that government departments aren’t the right people to come up with ‘innovative charging models’ – they don’t have the right skills, experience, and unlike entrepreneurs like myself they aren’t risking their personal money, but the nation’s future. Let’s focus instead on a ‘connected approach across government’. This would seem a perfect example of a relatively minor source of revenue (maybe as little as £50 million, according to the report published yesterday by Policy Exchange) preventing such an approach, and with it a route to how the UK will ‘earn our living in the future’.

In my own area, OpenCorporates has in a year grown to be the largest open database of corporate data in the world – without, I should add, any help, encouragement or cooperation from BIS. We have just released a new feature that allows search for directors across multiple jurisdictions, massively increasing the ability of journalists, fraud investigators, investors, civil society, customers and suppliers to understand companies. Needless to say, UK companies aren’t included in this list because this data is restricted to those who pay.

One vision for the future would include making the UK a genuinely open and transparent place to do business, for example making UK Companies House as open as that in New Zealand, where all data is available openly and without charge. It would include making the UK leaders in the field of open data, not just generating a world-leading ecosystem of companies such as we have in motorsport, but pioneering the use of open data by companies of all types and sizes. And it would include the government being able to reuse and publish its own data without the corrosive and restrictive licences placed upon it by the likes of Ordnance Survey, and thus have a truly connected approach.

You have it within your power to help enable that vision – I hope you will act on it.

Chris Taggart

Co-founder & CEO, OpenCorporates, founder OpenlyLocal.com
Member  of Local Public Data Panel

NOTE: This letter was originally published here.