The government is setting up a Data Strategy Board (DSB) that will be given £7m from April 2013 to purchase datasets from the Land Registry, Ordnance Survey, the Met Office and Companies House, which together form the Public Data Group.
The plan to pay trading funds to release data comes after trading funds expressed concerns about open data. Vanessa Lawrence, chief of Ordnance Survey, recently told CSW that “there is a real cost to collecting this information accurately, and it would be important to understand how that cost will be borne going forward.”
The DSB will be chaired by an independent appointment, and at least three members will be from outside government, including representatives from organisations that re-use public sector data. There will also be an Open Data User Group to advise the DSB.