Defra Gives Away Information – Don’t be alarmed, this is is not another data security scare! Environment secretary Elizabeth Truss announced today that at least 8,000 datasets held by The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) will be released during the next year in what she describes as “the single biggest government data give away the UK has ever seen”.
Why is Defra so keen to give so much information away? Speaking to an audience of technology experts, entrepreneurs and investors in London today, Truss said: “Today’s world-beating economies are places that unleash entrepreneurs and idea, and I want the people who make their living from food, farming and the environment to have the freedom, the data, the research and the people to think big, to take risks and to build profitable businesses.”
She also stated: “The economic opportunity of this is huge. There is a reason why Silicon Valley has invested more than $450m in the last two years in food start-ups; why the world’s most far-sighted investors, like Bill Gates and Li Ka-Shing, have spotted the opportunity; and there is a reason why environmental data and geospatial data are the top two categories of data in demand by companies, they are modern black gold.”
Defra has more broad, varied and rich data than any other government department. It’s not surprising when you consider that they have been tracking animal movements since the second world war, monitoring the rural economy since Domesday, and since the 1940s, surveying family eating habits.
The full transcript of the Elizabeth Truss announcements can be found here: Environment Secretary speech on the future of food and farming
