The Cabinet Office has started a public consultation on the Public Data Corporation. We very much welcome this development, which breaks a period of suspense where nobody seemed to know quite what was going on. ORG had in the meantime set up its own public consultation wiki to deal with the lack of a formal space to talk with government officials; and we will be continuing this process with a public workshop.

We want to encourage everyone with an interest in Open Data to go to the official engagement website or send them an email with your views. The potential economic implications for the UK sector are huge, in the hundreds of millions, and the final shape of the PDC will become an international reference that may help or hinder the Open Data movement in other countries as well.

We would like however to have a wider discussion about the PDC that can cover issues not raised in the official consultation. 

The engagement website states that they are looking at some particular areas such as business registration, environmental science and natural hazards, critical infrastructure and the built environment. Then it sets out questions about process, availability of data, etc.

This exercise is very positive and useful in setting where the PDC should focus its energies, and how it should work at the level of interfacing with data users. However, it does leave very little room for thinking about its ultimate aims and objectives, structure, governance, relation to existing trading funds, decision process for which data will be open, the setting of profit targets, etc.

We welcome everyone to engage in our public wiki and come to our open workshop on the 2nd of March at 6:30pm, at The Hub in Kings Cross. 

ENGAGEMENT SITE: http://pdcengagement.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/pdc/

OUR WIKI: http://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Public_Data_Corporation