The UK government’s linked data initiative is ambitious, audacious and could do more for building Britain’s Future than Universal Access or any of the other suggestions from the Digital Britain Report.

The sort of data driven economy you could develop from it, with dual fiscal streams of budgetary savings through more efficient utility derived from people “Getting Excited and Making Things” and from the tax revenue you can generate from successful businesses built upon it could potentially help fill the large black, gaping void which site at the heart of our economy.

However from spending a few days in it’s linked data gloriousness where you can seamlessly be transported from one pool of data to another via geo-organisational conduits one thing clearly strikes you.

Every citizen who will use any utility I create from this data will know a few bits about themselves and their existence: their co-ordinates in time and, in particular, space. And most likely they’ll describe themselves as a postcode. The postcode where I live, where I work. It’s almost like someone created a short url system for real life.

Without free and unfettered access to boundary data and the reverse lookups of postcodes to a geo point, we have no real human/user centric route into this web of data.

If I want to build something to do with schools (which I did and will write about soon), you’ll want schools near you. You know your postcode, yet you may not know your administrative district or your local education authority.

I think we all know the answer on how to fix it. The answer is clear. The only question is how long some people who can affect change can put their fingers in their ears and continually say no.