The government has announced a National Information Infrastructure (NII) that it says will eventually contain all public data in a way that it can be accessed by anyone, in real time.
The creation of the NII is in response to the independent Shakespeare Review of public sector information, which was published in June 2013 as part of the Cabinet Office’s Open Data White Paper. The NII has been announced as part of the Open Government Partnership’s (OGP) Summit in London this week.
“We’ve developed a process to identify those datasets that are most useful to either business, or civil society, or government, to improve growth, public services and citizens’ lives,” Peter Lawrence, deputy director of transparency and open data at the Cabinet Office, told the summit.
“I’m setting a vision across Whitehall for the NII. It will ultimately contain all public data, it will be good data, in real-time and accessed through an API.”
The OGP is an initiative aimed at securing firm commitments from governments to promote transparency, increase civic participation, fight corruption and harness new technologies to make government more open, effective and accountable. It officially launched in September 2011, with the UK as one of the eight founding members.
At the summit this week, another open data initiative prime minister David Cameron announced was the creation of a central register of company beneficial ownership, which would require all businesses to provide details of their ultimate owners.