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 today, our 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:
“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: please suggest your ideas by commenting on this blog!
Full terms of the Open Government Licence are at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/
Not happy at the privacy issues surrounding the filming of public meetings. It may well put people off from speaking openly.
This is an excellent development very much more in alignment with the public functions local authorities perform, and much more likely to promote public engagement. We can only hope authorities elsewhere in Wales will soon follow suit.
Hi Andrew, a good point re: filming public meetings (related to this post http://carmarthenplanning.blogspot.com/2011/11/transparency-monmouthshire-cc-leading.html) – we do ask that people filming respect any member of the public’s request to have cameras turned away when they speak.
Thank you both for your commenting here, hope to hear from you again.
(Posted by Helen in the communications department)
This is exactly what public authorities should be doing – enabling private sector entrepreneurs to use their own capital and skills to provide new services for local people at no cost to the taxpayer
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So Can I now film Planning committee meetings at Monmouthshire?
Hello there. Yes, people are very welcome to film public meetings. It is is encouraged provided no member of the public present asks that they are not filmed – in which case this person’s request must be respected.
Thanks for your comment!