Some more responses from the Government on free data
We've got the answers to the other questions we submitted, predictably vague but useful nonetheless (for campaign quotes, and just in building up the pressure to do something). You can read the questions and responses on Hansard, but I particularly like the look of this bit:
For central government bodies other than trading funds, the clear policy is that raw information should, subject to any statutory provision, be freely available or provided at the marginal cost of dissemination.
That's good to know, and backs up the Green Party's case for making it accessible as well, e.g. Parliamentary procedure in an open, machine-readable format rather than plain HTML, or key data on domestic energy use in one place as a canonical source rather than being scattered across different sections of government departments (Defra, BERR, CLG, etc.)
There's a nice piece in the Guardian today summarising recent developments, well worth a look. It would be nice if we could supply those guys with a decent set of OpenStreetMap graphics for use in articles rather than using non-free sources too!