Leaving aside any questions of how much data you could actually make public without risk of depseudonymization, what benefit does this have over a 1998-vintage

Leaving aside any questions of how much data you could actually make public without risk of depseudonymization, what benefit does this have over a 1998-vintage database-backed website run by the government? Like, the government licenses doctors and schools and such, so aren't they the central party controlling who can write to the database regardless?