Unlocking information, engaging communities

Knowledge is intangible, non-rivalrous, cumulative and infinite. It is often unobservable, but becomes observable as information. There is no reliable model for understanding the conversion of inputs (from research, innovation, learning by doing) into outputs (improved services, costs saved). Perhaps the least interesting thing you can do with knowledge is manage it, but this is a first step to achieving any of the real benefits. Knowledge expansion is driving change; the Web and web technologies are the most powerful knowledge sharing tools. New standards, technologies and approaches, such as codifying, metadata and RDFa, are the key to unlocking the potential of the information and knowledge that government holds.

Governments produce and hold lots of useful information that people want to access – either to find and use or, more importantly, to re-use. Increasingly, the most useful services are those which combine data from different sources, mixing public, private and user created content – essentially, data mashing, which happens on the Web or using web technologies, standards and approaches. The PSI re-use agenda is about the public sector providing more and better information to allow the public, users and communities to create new services. Our aim is to release the information so that others can be creative in developing and tailoring new services to their audiences. The principle of serendipitous re-use means that the very best uses of government information will be all the things we cannot think of but that others will develop. This approach, of semantically enabling existing sources of public sector information on the Web, has tremendous promise.