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Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Paywalling (more) public sector data is a bad idea, actually www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-od... New post. The marginal cost limit in the UK's RPSI regulations does not mandate #opendata – but does provide a convenient excuse for underfunding of public data infrastructure #datapolicy #openpolicy

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Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

My response (as Datadaptive) to the questions in the UK Government's call for evidence on making it even easier for public bodies to charge for re-use of public sector data www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-od... The call for evidence closes today www.gov.uk/government/c... #datapolicy #FOI #opendata

There is no way to reconcile the stated objective of making all public sector data "affordable and easy to re‑use" with the plan to increase charging above marginal cost, and indeed the existing widespread practice of charging for high-value datasets is the main barrier to maximising the potential for re-use of public sector data. Charging for re-use and associated terms and restrictions inevitably introduce burdens and friction in the re-use of public sector data, and charging entirely prevents re-use for many use cases – particularly where businesses want to share data directly with customers or combine public data with their own data on the web.

10:17 AM · Sep 8, 2026

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