FT.com / UK / Business - London opens up data with online scheme

'The public will be able to access a wide range of data about public services in London, from hospital waiting lists and crime figures to bus timetables and carbon emissions, under a scheme announced on Thursday.'

Boris Johnson, mayor of London, said he wanted the capital’s technologists to emulate a US scheme, known as Apps for Democracy, to encourage local democracy and boost the city’s software sector.

...said there were “huge political benefits” for public bodies to have an “unpaid army of scrutineers of your data”, as highlighted by the MPs’ expenses scandal. Greater transparency would encourage greater fiscal discipline, he added.

via ft.com

Two coinciding trends that don't make a positive. The fact that opening up data is being done for reasons to encourage public scrutiny is not the same as encouraging geeks to develop better servies. Here, political paranoia and disenfranchisement get in the way of delivering better stuff that paradoxically means we can spend less time dealing with government.

Of course with its present trajectory (on both sides of the fence), there is hardly any chance of such autonomy from the state.