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I'd rather an all or nothing approach to these kind of information sharing arrangements. If information is to be shared, it should be made freely available to

• 7952 13y ago
  I regularly buy data from government departments and it is extremely difficult. They are not commercially minded and regularly undercharge. You have to chase them for weeks to get anything done and the billing arrangements are complicated. In my experience UK government is terrible at selling anything. An API for tax data would have lots of possible applications, as a way of checking income for example. But it is doubtful that the government would ever have the skills to pull it off. They should either sell the data through a competent third party or make it open.
  • swombat 13y ago
    Not true - there is one team in Government that could do this: the gov.uk team. http://gov.uk http://gov.uk is hands down the best government site I've ever seen. I'd trust those guys to be able to deliver it.
    • jasiek 13y ago
      I takes a lot more than a team of dedicated people to bring something in government into completion. First - there has to be a political consensus within the department to make things happen, then a business case needs to be written and approved. A budget needs to be assigned (where to get the money is another problem), and it needs to be decided that it will be built in-house. Only then, you can actually start building things - the process above takes anywhere from 6 months to a year, sometimes more.
      • swombat 13y ago
        I never said that was all it took (you seem to be replying to a straw man), but it is a necessary element.