‘The key thing here,’ Professor Sarah Jenkins said to her colleague, ‘is to try and get the Department to take open data seriously. It doesn’t matter if it’s through us or others, or even themselves. We just need them to get their act together and to make more data accessible.’

They both knew that wasn’t quite true. Without an injection of funds their own open data initiative, the Regional Data Lab, was in danger of winding down. They weren’t quite at the makeor-break point, but it was always hovering nearby.

Dr McNeill nodded. ‘I’m not holding my breath.’

He’d been banging the open data drum for a number of years. In his experience, government had very little interest in making their data available, and even less enthusiasm for spending money during austerity. And open data was not free data; somebody had to pay for the labour of preparing data for release and building the necessary data infrastructure.

A middle-aged man poked his head out of a nearby door. ‘Professor Jenkins? I’m Paul Lester, the principal officer for open government. Come in, come in.’

The room was small and cramped, overfilled with bookcases and filing cabinets. The dirty window provided a view of another office building.

Lester retreated behind his desk. ‘The unit was only set up a few months ago, so we’re still finding our feet. I know you met one of my colleagues at the open data consultative panel; he said you’ve got a proposal concerning open data tools for the public sector?’

‘That’s partially why we’re here, but also to get a sense of what you do and the roadmap for making more government data accessible,’ Professor Jenkins said. ‘I’m not sure what you know about us, but basically we work with local authorities and government departments to create open data tools – mainly interactive maps and graphs – to aid their work. And we’re always looking for more data to plug into our tools.’

‘That’s the Regional Data Lab website?’ Lester said, aware he should have taken a closer look at the site before the meeting.

‘That’s us. What we do is take what data are already openly available and make them useable for those that lack the skills to build their own tools so they can use them in formulating policy.