Lecture to hear calls to ’de-nationalise our data’

PA 59/11 A provocative public figure who has played an influential role in the shaping of much of the Conservative Party's thinking on IT will be leading the charge to de-nationalise our data during a public lecture later this month. Liam Maxwell, an outspoken councillor and lead on IT at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, will deliver a talk on Government as a Service in the very first event from an open lecture series by Horizon Digital Economy Research at The University of Nottingham. In his talk, Mr Maxwell will argue that the Government must go further than providing public access to centrally-held information but that the management and control of individuals' personal data should be handed back to us as citizens. And, he will say, public access to such information could provide a lifeline to our ailing economy by offering businesses the chance to take advantage of such 'open source' data to develop exciting new prospects for enterprise opportunities, once issues relating to Freedom of Information and Data Protection legislation are resolved. Mr Maxwell, who has a close association with the high-profile Centre for Policy Studies, has introduced a number of cutting-edge technologies at Windsor and Maidenhead to improve council performance and to ensure council services remain open and transparent to the people it serves. This has included the use of mapping tools as a way for members of the public within the borough to track council responsiveness to issues raised and the success of innovations such as these are being closely tracked by the major policy units at Downing Street.