Education and Skills Funding Agency
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Open Data - making data freely available


The Government is committed to ensuring that data is transparent and easily accessible as detailed in The Open Data White Paper, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Open Data Strategy and HM Government Information Principles. It is releasing public data to help people understand how government works and how policies are made. The Data.gov.uk website brings together public data in one searchable website.

Open Data is about making data freely available in open access formats in a way which makes it possible for others to re-use through data.gov.uk

Ministers asked for a review of BIS and the Agency’s approach to making FE and skills data available to the public, and to make recommendations for improvement.

The review looked at how BIS and the Agency could change its approach to open data to encourage providers, developers and social media experts to use and re-use the data innovatively and imaginatively.

This resulted in ten recommendations to take the open data agenda forward. These included making key datasets available on data.gov.uk in open access formats, rather than Excel or PdF as they are currently, with datasets on informing learner choice available by September 2013.

The Agency have made significant progress in realising the recommendations on open data. We have uploaded 113 datasets onto data.gov.uk which have had over 1,000 views so far, with the
data on success rates proving the most popular so far.

Richard Field, Chief Information Officer, at the Agency said:

“Open Data is a key priority for the Agency and we are delighted with the progress to date. We will continue to ensure that open data becomes the default approach to data to benefit our stakeholders in the Education and Skills sector.

"The Agency is working with a range of interested groups to communicate Open Data and generate interest and we will liaise with other government departments to share best practice. This is a key focus for us as we aim to make data available around a tailored self-serve approach which will enable users to experience a simple online journey”

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