Spending data has made the workings of government much clearer to journalists and citizens

Tim Berners-Lee: In the UK, with clear request from the very top levels, with dedicated people working within government, with strong support from academic and non-profit sides, there has been a major shift toward Open Government Data as the default. Spending data has made the workings of government much clearer to journalists and citizens, encouraging citzen engagement in the process and in democracy. Logistical and geospatial data has made it more efficient to run a company. Data on the performance of schools and hospitals has helped people chose where to live, and of course provided publicly visible feedback to the managers .. and so on. The US and UK governments have competed in an informal race to get the data out, and to reap the benefits.

We welcome Germany joining that race, for Germany’s sake but also because we know that as more countries provide data about more things, so we all will get a picture of the state of the whole world, a picture which is very important in this crucial era.

Tim Berners Lee, W3C Consortium and Advisor of the UK Government on Linked Open data