Once upon a time, well actually, in 2009. Gordon Brown and Sir Tim Berners-Lee were having dinner.
(A reminder: one of them was Prime Minister, and the other is credited with inventing the World Wide Web.)
Gordon Brown, doing what Prime Ministers do, asked this very intelligent person “Hey Sir Tim. You know this internet stuff. I’m in charge of the government. How can the government make best use of this internet thing?”
“Oh, very simple, Prime Minister. Put all of the government’s data online.”
Gordon Brown thought for a few seconds.
“Y’know. That’s a good idea. Let’s do it.”
And thus was born the Open Data movement. Cities in the UK started publishing their data online for citizens to explore. And the Open Government License means that anyone can ‘copy, publish, distribute, transmit and adapt’ the work of public data institutions.
It was a pretty big deal. As a result, In 2014, the UK topped the list of world’s most open countries. Today it is second, just underneath Canada.
And it’s why it’s relatively easy to gather, wrangle, and combine data to form unique stories that tell us more about how we live.
Funny what can happen from a dinner conversation.
This originally appeared on my LinkedIn.