Britain asks the question, as the government is about to release masses of information:
Freeing up government data formed a key part of the three main parties’ manifestos and now the coalition government has pledged some major launches, the first of which we could see in the next few days. “We will unleash a tsunami of data,” says one source close to the Big Society proposals. This is set to include local crime statistics, full details of all government contracts and quangos spending more than …£25,000, local government spending of more than …£500 and full salary details of senior civil servants.
The Big Society declaration published by Downing Street included a key line: “We will create a new ‘right to data’ so that government-held datasets can be requested and used by the public, and then published on a regular basis.”