Of governments and geeks

In several countries more official data are being issued in raw form so that anybody can use them. This forces bureaucrats and creative types to interact in new ways

Feb 4th 2010 | WASHINGTON, DC | From The Economist print edition

OU might think that Clay Johnson, a campaigner for transparency, would be pleased to see a ferret, with a deerstalker hat and magnifying glass, pop up on his screen. This creature is the mascot for BetaDataFerrett, an online application offered by America’s Census Bureau.

In fact, Mr Johnson hates the beast. A builder of digital tools that make sense of public information, he does not need anybody to supply him with applications. All that he and his colleagues want at their Sunlight Labs—part of a non-profit group based in Washington, DC—is machine-readable data. Once he has facts that can be pulled into a computer program, he can do the ferreting for himself.

Still, Sunlight and other campaigners for better access to official information have had much to celebrate over the past year. The governments of America, Britain, Australia and New Zealand have all produced collections of machine-readable data. A British site entitled data.gov.uk was launched last month; the plan is to post a growing supply of facts that citizens or private institutions can sift through and play with as they choose.

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