Magazzino

An ambitious website that will open up government data to the public will launch in beta, or pilot, form in December.

Reams of anonymous data about schools, crime and health could all be included.

Data.gov.uk has been developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the web, and Professor Nigel Shadbolt at the University of Southampton.

It is designed to be similar to the Obama administration’s data.gov project, run by Vivek Kundra.

Mr Kundra is Chief Information Officer in the US. The American site, while not yet comprehensive, is already up and running, with improvements fuelled by user feedback.