How The Guardian has influenced the regulations on data

Information and data are vital tools to any journalist, but they are especially important to newspaper publications such as “The Guardian”. The importance of such information was demonstrated by The Guardian on March 9^th 2006, when their technology supplement published an article entitled “Give us back our Crown Jewels”, by Charles Arthur and Michael Cross.  This article expressed their views that data gathered by the authorities, at the public’s expense, should be made freely available for reuse by members of the public. At this time such data was subject to restricted access and often came with a very high fee, meaning new companies with shallow pockets could not have access to information which could help them to develop. The United States had already made their own data free to all and Charles Arthur and Michael Cross argued that by the UK not following suit we are losing out on commercial opportunities. This article marked the beginning of their “Free Our Data” campaign.

 In January 2010 www.data.gov.uk; a new government website allowing public sector data to be made freely available, was launched. Then in June 2010 the Combined Online Information System (COINS) was established, which is a database of all UK government expenditure, provided by the government departments. The government then announced that all public sector information was to be made available, without the need to apply for permission and free of charge, in September 2010. This is now known as the “Open Government License” and was designed to work with “Creative Commons Licenses”.  The Guardian then took it upon themselves to make such data even more accessible to the general public. They have achieved this through their website “http://www.guardian.co.uk” which has a section with the heading “Data”, which links to their “Data Store”. The homepage of the “Data Store” has the slogan “Facts are sacred” at the head of the page, this is a clear indication of the importance of data to The Guardian.

The “Data Store” is then split into subsections of different topics or websites, each relating to different types of data, three of which provide different systems to allow you to search for information on a specific topic. They provide an “A-Z of data” which allows individuals to search through categories, ranging from Afghanistan, to data on the Royal Bank of Scotland, to statistics regarding Zimbabwe. Then there is the “World data search” page which has a search box format allowing you to type in specific key words and search for relevant government data. The page “Aid data” takes the same format but the search covers global development data. They have also dedicated a page to data on “Cuts”, a topic that’s currently at the forefront of many people’s minds. Here there are several articles, illustrated by spreadsheets and other data visualisations, covering data which otherwise may have been incomprehensible by the general public. An example of this is the article they published on October 26^th 2011, entitled “Government spending by department, 2010-11: get the data”, which they explained through a vibrant graphic poster.

As a newspaper which produces daily reports on business and the economy, data is essential for The Guardian’s publication. It seems only appropriate that they have taken such an interest and caused a great influence in how data is now made available to the public.

Still unfinished so criticism and tips will be greatly appreciated!