In his speech on Building Britain’s Digital
Future, Gordon Brown announced disruptive changes coming up to geo-related datasets in the UK:
Read the transcript here, via Twitter:
- The Department for Transport and the transport industry are today making available the core reference datasets that contain the precise names and co-ordinates of all 350 thousand bus stops, railway stations and airports in Britain.
- Public transport timetables and real-time running information is currently owned by the operating companies. But we will work to free it up - and from today we will make it a condition of future franchises that this data will be made freely available.
- And following the strong support in our recent consultation, I can confirm that from 1st April, we will be making a substantial package of information held by ordnance survey freely available to the public, without restrictions on re-use. Further details on the package and government’s response to the consultation will be published by the end of March.
Wow.
Germany is some lightyears away from this.
