Developers and citizens who want to create useful ‘apps’ to improve people’s lives can now freely access and use data on Monmouthshire Council’s website.
From last Thursday, the Monmouthshire website has changed its licensing terms to that of the Open Government Licensing. Monmouthshire is the first Welsh council to do this.
This means that anybody can make use of the information on Monmouthshire Council’s website. People are free to:
- copy, publish, distribute and transmit the information;
- adapt the information;
- exploit the information commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application.
Developers and other interested parties across the world will be able to use data available on the council’s website for free to build applications that have a civic value and enhance people’s lives.
Councillor Bob Greenland, Cabinet Member for communications, said:
He said:
“This is our first step in becoming an ‘open data’ authority and we are the first in Wales to take this step.
“We believe non-sensitive information should be free to use and our data has been paid for by taxpayers so it belongs to them. This move shows support for the tech business community who may want to use the information in web applications. ”
Tim MacDermott, the council’s Customer Services Manager, has been leading the change.
“By making the information open it can be repurposed to become more useful.
“Open data helps us in our aim to be a transparent and open organisation. It’s early days so the data on our website is not always going to be presented in a friendly format so we are inviting the developer community to identify datasets they are interested in and let us know how they’d like us to present that information.
“Having an idea of how best to present information will help us to learn how to make the information we give more useful.”
Developers can suggest ideas by going to the Monmouthshire blog at http://wp.me/p1QXKB-1h
Full terms of the Open Government Licence are at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/
