Public Data Group

The Public Data Group (PDG) will no longer meet and its functions have been integrated into a new Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) board. The Public Data Group (PDG) brought together 4 organisations (Companies House, Land Registry, Met Office and Ordnance Survey) that excel in the collection, management and distribution of vital data sets, under one banner.

The Public Data Group was established following the 2011 Autumn Statement. Since then it helped its members work together to identify shared improvements, best practice and efficiencies across areas including surveying and IT.

More recently its work focused mainly on data policy. This involved projects such as the recent GeoVation challenge on Housing. The challenge saw Land Registry and Ordnance Survey run a joint competition for innovators to promote and support the use of their data to solve housing issues. PDG also recently did a survey of users of its data and published the results as part of a Public Data Group Spring Statement.

The PDG Board met for the final time in April 2015.

The new BIS Digital Culture, Services Platforms and Data Board will be internal to BIS. It will bring together relevant senior officials from across the department and its wider family of organisations. The existing functions of the PDG board will be incorporated into the new BIS board and the CEOs of Companies House and Ordnance Survey will join as permanent Board members. The current PDG Chair, Claudia Arney, will attend as a non-executive director on a temporary basis.

Claudia Arney, Chair of PDG, said:

I’m pleased with what the PDG has done and am excited at by the prospect of what the new Board can achieve in taking this work further. This will put PDG members’ expertise and vital data at the heart of BIS digital and data policy.

Data and digital are, and will continue be, key to growth in the UK economy. I think it’s exactly the right thing for BIS to bring this wide range of activities under a single Board and I look forward to supporting it.

Membership

The members were:

Terms of reference

Documents

The Public Data Group: Open Data statement 2014 provides information on the work of PDG and commitments for 2014 to 2015.

The Public Data Group: Public Data statement 2015 provides results of a survey of organisations using PDG data, actions resulting from the survey and updates on existing commitments. View the results from the Public Data Group survey (December 2014 to February 2015) (CSV, 81.8KB).

Contact details

For any enquiries about Public Data Group please email: enquiries@beis.gov.uk.

Detailed information

Public minutes

Individual Board meetings: