Jacques Chester

"At this point, you may pause and wonder-why would the Government want to give private companies a 'free ride'?" 1. The process of opening the data sets for public consumption improves government's ability to mine its own data. 2. Once the data has been integrated, the cost of making it available for public use is very low. Most of the cost is sunk already. 3. A cost-recovery approach to providing data will create disincentives to produce any data without identifying a 'market' first. Yet we can see from the example of 'mashup' services that the best ideas come about after, not before, the data is available. 4. Data transparency for government is akin to transparency and accountability generally. It is not an optional extra; it is an essential component for the healthy functioning of our democratic system. For these reasons any and all possible data should be released, all new data should be indexed in a way that conforms with DIRKS and similar, and all data should be presumed classified as being for-release, rather than needing a lengthy and expensive FoI process to tease out.