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Free Hosting for Linking Local Government Spending Data
29 September, 2010
Ahead of the UK Government Transparency Board's January deadline for publishing expenditure data, leading UK Semantic Web company Talis announces a free Linked Data hosting offer, open to all UK Local Government authorities.
As part of the coalition government's transparency agenda, local authorities have been requested to publish spending data for transactions in excess of £500 in a machine readable form. The request encourages the application of Linked Data techniques to enable individual authority data to be linked via the web with other data both at a local and national level.
As host for Linked Data on behalf of data.gov.uk and others, Talis recognises that many authorities may need help to take an extra step to adopt Linked Data as an additional publishing method, beyond basic spreadsheet formats. To make that step as easy as possible, Talis will be providing, at no charge, a store in its Linked Data Platform for every UK local authority's expenditure data. In addition Talis will work with local authorities, suppliers of their systems, and Linked Data enthusiasts to facilitate the loading process. From November, local authority representatives will be able to claim maintenance access to their stores via the Talis website. Those wishing to register early interest can do so at www.talis.com/localgov.
Talis CEO, Dave Errington said "For local authorities facing the dual challenges of publishing spending data in an open way whilst coping with the current economic pressures, our provision of free Linked Data storage will help realise the social and economic benefits that sharing Linked Data can bring."
More Information
Linked Data
The Semantic Web vision, first published by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 2001, envisions an online world where each piece of data, and its relationship with others, are defined as links. Linked Data is the pragmatic use of simple tools to build a web of data as the foundations of this Semantic Web. Although Linked Data has only been promoted for a short period, large amounts of data from governments, the media, and community projects are already published in this way.
Talis
Birmingham-based Talis is at the global forefront of Semantic Web development. A forty-year old, 80 employee, software company which has built on its early history in the data rich world of libraries to be come a recognised technology leader for the emergent Semantic Web.
The Talis Platform
The Talis Platform is a cloud-based Linked Data platform. A highly available and adaptable environment for data sharing and weaving it in to a global web of data. Supporting data publishers and developers, the Platform provides simple API access to publish and query data. For data owners and consumers, the Platform provides the means to draw the most value from new and existing datasets.
