Report on the UK’s high-value datasets
December 2023
Anna Powell-Smith and Amber Dellar
We have just published a new report: Falling behind? The UK’s high-value public datasets.
This paper calls for the UK government to make their high-value datasets freely available to support government processes and unlock economic growth. We audit the current state of UK high-value datasets and find they have patchy accessibility. With no plans to improve on this, the UK is falling behind the EU and other comparators.
Background
High-value datasets contain no personal data and are held by the government. They would likely be very beneficial to society and the economy were they made freely available. For example, opening up these datasets would support companies creating value-added services, research and innovation, and better-informed policymaking.
In recognition of this, the EU recently mandated that member states make certain high-value datasets, including data on addresses, buildings, land use and companies, freely available. Many of the UK’s non-EU trading partners like Australia and the US have similar strategies in place. Great successes have been reported worldwide.
The UK’s approach to high-value data
We audit the availability of the UK’s high-value data using the list of datasets created by the EU. We find that several of the UK’s high-value datasets are still only available under prohibitive commercial licences, and their use is further restricted by intellectual property rights caused by confused governance arrangements. These findings are in line with a 2023 independent review, which warned that opportunities are being wasted by the private sector’s “inconsistent and fragmented” access to public data. We identify four data assets as particular priorities for release:
Buildings and other topographical information
Land use and agricultural parcels
Postal addresses
Meteorological information.
What’s more, the UK does not have a strategy for identifying, or improving the availability of, their high-value datasets:
A government plan to draw up a list of datasets that form the UK’s National Data Infrastructure was abandoned by 2015.
Re-use of public data was largely left out of the scope of the 2020 National Data Strategy.
In 2022, the UN ranked the UK 11th for digital government maturity, down four places from 2020.
The UK is thus falling behind many trading partners that it might reasonably view as comparators on data policy.
This gap in data policy could harm the UK’s international reputation; increasingly, companies trading in the UK will be disappointed if they do not find the same standard of public data infrastructure as elsewhere. The UK will also suffer opportunity costs if it does not open up key datasets. For example, better access to land use data could streamline the UK government’s fight against the climate crisis and support SMEs innovating in planning and development. And better access to address data could improve public service delivery, as well as support the private sector.
Our recommendations to the Government
We recommend the Government should:
Adopt a national high-value data strategy as part of its wider industrial strategy. This should address the governance and funding changes needed to improve access to data, identify initial datasets to prioritise for improvement, and create a clear strategy for identifying further high-value datasets, which should include consultation with the private sector and civil society. Countries such as New Zealand and Denmark provide examples of how this can be done.
Use the EU’s list as a basis for selecting high-value datasets to prioritise (our research suggests that the set is fairly standard across countries), with additional consultation on UK-specific datasets that could help unlock value.
Mandate that high-value datasets be made available under open licensing, in a machine-readable format, and via both API and bulk download.
Prioritise improving access to the following key high-value datasets in the UK:
postal addresses
buildings and topographical information
land use and agricultural parcels
meteorological information.
Review the governance of the UK’s key data-producing institutions, to ensure the UK remains competitive with other countries.
Read the full report
The full report goes into greater detail than above.
We will continue to push for open core public datasets, and we are keen to discuss the issue further with anyone interested. Please get in touch at contact@centreforpublicdata.org.