http://bit.ly/pVo5Ry

On the other hand, Google Maps - the most visible part of a geographic information industry worth billions of dollars a year - started out in the US, where the national mapping agency doesn’t dabble in commercial activities and gives its raw data away for free.
The coalition government came into office supporting the US model. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, has promised to make the UK “the most transparent government in the world”. This involves releasing data sets not only for public scrutiny by “armchair auditors”, but also for re-use: to be mashed up on websites and in apps and new services, for commercial as well as non-commercial purposes.
In a speech earlier this year announcing a new “right to data”, Maude referred specifically to open data’s potential for powering economic growth.
Unsurprisingly, the philosophy goes down less well with public bodies who today enjoy their own revenue streams, and with the Treasury, which would be expected to fill the gap. Hence the supposed need for the Public Data Corporation (PDC), an idea that is now the subject of a Cabinet Office consultation.
The idea seems to be that the PDC will take over the trading activities of the Land Registry, the Met Office and Ordnance Survey, pumping out two types of product. The first will be “public task” raw data, available free on an open licence. The second will be value-added products, chargeable to users. The consultation seems to lean towards a “freemium” business model, where users get a “lite” version for free, but have to buy a licence when they want more data volume, features, or usage.
According to the consultation, such a model could balance the conflicting demands placed on the corporation to pay its way while supplying core data free.
It also opens up possibilities for commercial partnerships, and outright privatisation. The consultation enthuses about the opportunities the corporation will have for developing “new, innovative ways of making data and information available”.
Perhaps. But monolithic Whitehall-created corporations do not have a strong track record of innovation, and creating one seems an anomalous step by a Conservative government committed to localism.
If we’re serious about the potential of open data, let’s do it properly. Central government could enforce the new philosophy on existing public bodies without establishing new ones. The funding gap could be filled by central funds, user charges (for example property developers paying for changes to maps) and by doing fewer things to start with.
This means getting out of the commercial sector entirely. After all, the state no longer tries to earn revenues by building telephones and ships: what makes it think it can do so at the cutting edge of the knowledge economy?