UK Open Government Licence removes barriers to re-use of public sector information

Launched today by the National Archives, a new UK Open Government Licence (UK OGL) is said to remove many of the existing barriers to re-use of government held information. The new licence is claimed to be simple. flexible and compatible with other recognised licensing models such as the Creative Commons licence.

The UK OGL will be applicable across the entire public sector throughout England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Replacing the existing Click-Use Licence it will enable the free re-use of a broad range of public sector information, including Crown Copyright, databases and source code. Users will not be required to register or formally apply for permission to re-use data.

The new licence has seen preliminary tests on data.gov.uk where developers have created a broad range of applications through access to Government datasets. Freeing up public sector information for re-use in web sites and applications could contribute an additional £6billion to the UK’s economy, according to a Cambridge University study.

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and a member of the Public Sector Transparency Board called the OGL "one element of the UK's position at the forefront of the worldwide open data revolution" adding that it was "great to see a simple and straightforward licence for people to re-use government data in any way they want. It will enable inventive people to build innovative new applications and web sites which help people in their everyday lives".

See also:

• New UK licence opens up unlimited possibilities for re-use of Government information, the National Archives press release about the UK OGL.
• UK Government moves to free more public data, a report from The H.

(trk)