More on the UK's Free Our Data campaign

S.A. Mathieson, It's a struggle to get data out of councils, The Guardian, August 24, 2006. Excerpt:

Much of the Free Our Data debate, held last month in London with the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, focused on Ordnance Survey. Its chief executive, Vanessa Lawrence, defended its model of raising revenues from customers rather than the taxpayer - although with 47% of OS's revenue coming from the public sector, taxpayers often are the customers....

However, one attendee questioned the willingness of organisations that enjoy direct tax-raising powers, with no financial dependence on selling data, to free our data - local authorities.

Benjamin Bennetts, managing director of the not-for-profit company Land Management Information Service (LaMIS), told the debate that his business has enormous difficulties extracting data from local authorities, adding that he sees "absolutely no consistency [and] no means for anyone to challenge a decision not to release data"....