Open Data Institute to open this week, highlighting big data innovation in the UK - The Next Web

"The Open Data Institute (ODI) officially opens this week and it is 'a collaboration between businesses, entrepreneurs, researchers, government and society to unlock enterprise and social value from the vast amount of open government data now being made available'. That’s quite a mouthful – put plainly, there’s a truck load of open data around, so let’s have at it and see what we can do. The organisation has some pretty weighty founders, father of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, created it to be independent, non-profit and non-partisan. So far the ODI has nailed down £10 million ($16m+ USD) over five years from the UK government via the Technology Strategy Board, which invests in tech research and development, and a further $750,000 from Omidyar Network, the philanthropic investment firm. The organisation is also working toward long-term sustainability through match funding and direct revenue... As part of the official ministerial opening, the ODI has been working with Deloitte to show off some analysis on how the UK handles its data.  The report highlights say that the UK is leading the world. It says that although gov.data.uk doesn’t have the highest quantity of open data sites in comparison with say, the US or France, the site receives more daily visits than both data.gouv.fr and data.gov in the US.  Deloitte has found that between January 2010 and September 2012, demand for open data on data.gov.uk, measured by the average number of page views for each dataset, has grown by 285%. So there is clearly a demand for opening up data so that it can be used in relevant ways... There’s also at least three startups working from the ODI already. Agile big data specialists Mastodon C; Open Corporates, which aims to bring all information about companies around the world together in one place; Placr, which brings together location and data; and Locatable, the free service that sucks in data to help users work out where they would like to live, based on things like tax rates and commuting distances...  At Le Web London, data scientist DJ Patil explained that big data needs to serve a purpose and he does indeed have a point. The UK government’s release of swathes of data is a good thing, but it doesn’t benefit everyone unless it is presented in useful ways, understandable by human beings rather than just machines. The ODI will hopefully go some way to helping this happen.  There are of course questions around the idea of a “data base state” and concerns about privacy for individuals ... The ODI responds to this idea with a message of data democratisation: 'There are those who fear a database state — where only the powerful have access to data and use it to spy and snoop. In fact the internet and web, as well as the falling cost of ever more powerful personal computing devices, have democratised data. This centrally gathered data, when distributed, is a new public good, a new economic and social resource. The UK is well placed to exploit it to the benefit of the country at large and each of us individually...'"