The 21st December 2012 wasn’t the end of the world. But it was the day a music video for the first time passed one billion views on YouTube. It has been said that a reason for this success for Gangnam Style was that the Korean pop singer PSY hasn’t pursued any copyrights related to the video. But that doesn’t mean that PSY doesn’t earn money from the video. On the contrary related commercials are making money Gangnam Style.
A hindrance for better data quality by better real world alignment has traditionally been lack of free and open reference data. Some issues has been availability and heavy price tags on government collected data.
In my current daily work I mostly use such data within the United Kingdom and Denmark. And here the authorities are taking different paths.
The prices on UK public reference data has traditionally been fairly high and there’s certainly room for innovation around open government data as reported on DataQualityPro in the post Introduction to the Open Data User Group UK.
In Denmark the 21st December 2012 was the day it was published that a unanimous parliament had agreed on the laws behind having Free and Open Public Sector Master Data. From the 1st January 2013 there are no price tags on reference data about addresses, properties, companies (and citizens) and there are plans for making those data even more available, consistent and timely.
Great news for data quality, Gangnam Style.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 
Open and transparent – a great combination for a approach to encourage commerce (in it’s widest sense). Let’s hope more sovereign entities quickly adopt the same.
Absolutely Dave. Governments should think more about the huge benefits for commerce and society in general than making petty cash (compared to state budgets) from selling data.
I agree – reducing the cost (in time and effort as well as money) of access to reference data helps give local and global economies a boost, and paves the way for improved service provision. More openness and transparency from our governments and other data holders will have wide-reaching benefits!
Thanks for adding in Sophie
It’s definitely a great initiative to ensure “Free and Open Public Sector Master Data”. It will be exciting to experience the quality of that data, and see what happens on the market of related services.
I’m working on that one Jane 🙂