Disruptive Proactivity

The Public Data Corporation consultation – on “Plans for a Public Data Corporation” closes at the end of this week. If you’ve not had a look at their questions yet, you probably should (if you read this, you’ll be interested).

In many ways, this is the big enchilada. This could be the biggest decision that cements many of the things that have been fought over for many years. If the PDC is set up in the right way, even though it wont be everything we want it to be, it’ll be a defined process for opening up currently closed data where there is no process.

Even if that process could teach James Dyson something about sucking, it is a process which can be improved in future. This is vital.

We must thank the Civil Servants who put together such a strong consultatoin, and for the questions they asked. They’re open, interesting, and asking questions that challenge and consider the very nature of the PDC. There are a number of people and organisations with specific interests which would like a very different PDC to that which would offer the most (or indeed, any) benefit to the open data community.

If you haven’t responded yet, then you should. If you read my blog, you probably already know that.

But, more importantly, we should encourage others from non-data group with which we also work to make their voices heard. If the only people who remotely engage with the PDC are open data activists, then the open data agenda will deserve to return to the sidelines from whence it came.

The consultation is here: http://pdcengagement.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/pdc/