Being a government with several data loss scandals a month this is freaking me out big time. Less than a week ago a USB stick with login data to systems with 12M taxpayers was found on a pub car park. You can't imagine how many go unreported.

I'm all for freeing publicly owned data, but how is it going to happen is the scary bit.

I think the appalling state of government data security and this article are separate issues.

I was actually pleasantly surprised that there was a fairly forward thinking web-based initiative being sponsored by the government. The data in the article is exactly the sort of information that should be freely available for "mashing up"*

* That phrase sounds a bit too Nathan Barley-esque to me.

I agree on having that data publicly available. But note that data resides on the same systems the private data resides. A big mistake, just once, could mean an unprecedented breach.

And I happen to know consultants working for the government here in London, you don't want to know how bad things are.