Until recently, government entities have been largely absent in the movement towards worldwide data exchange. This absence is, in part, due to the fact that government data is typically produced in formats that does not allow for use in “mash-ups,” the merging of data sources providing for a novel functionality. Due to the flexibility with which digital information can be analyzed, compared and presented, information-creators such as government agencies should not themselves imagine the most useful ways to access or view data. Rather than dictate data views, governments should instead clear access to the raw data, allowing users to do the view-building and -sorting themselves, according to their needs or interests. The US and the UK have been leaders in the push to open government data (OGD), both governments unveiling vast quantities of searchable data in 2009, on user-facing sites. In this paper, we provide a synthesis of the many reports and recommendations made by previous working groups and organizations.
