Experts call on government to extend open data policy

V3 - The government needs to overcome its "data hugging tendencies" and keep pace with the expectations of a new web-savvy generation, according to industry experts speaking at the Profiting from the New Web conference on Monday.

Andrew Stott, a member of the UK Transparency Board, explained that the government often decides not to release public data, using the excuse that it is not accurate or is too time consuming a process.

"Sometimes government just has an instinctive feeling not to free up data, and then tries to rationalise it," he said.