The UK is making some big changes today, and we look forward to these changes being implemented here:
The UK Government will open its books for the whole world. All expenditure for all Government departments over £25,000 will be published at data.gov.uk. For some departments, we will publish all data over £500. We will be publishing all this as open data, and we will be publishing updated data every month.
There is a big financial incentive. We want people around the world to help us identify savings; we want individuals and organisations to use and abuse this data for commercial purposes; and we want companies to offer to undercut their competitors who are already providing services to the UK Government.
Most importantly we want British taxpayers to hold us account. We want them to ask why we are spending money on a particular service, or a particular company. We want them to understand what their taxes are being spent on.
But we need your help. We want you to bring this data alive – and we want you to explain what these figures actually mean. We want you to reuse and scrutinise this data in any way you can.
Britain is committed to being the world leader on transparent data, and with your help, this data will be a major step in achieving this aim.