Telcos need to release mobile information as open data, urges M&S innovation manager

Pete Williams says M&S might also be interested in opening up its own data for public use

The UK is a world leader in releasing datasets into the public domain via the Open Data Initiative. However, the vast majority of this data has come from the public sector, which has published 23,423 datasets at the time of writing, making them freely available for use by government bodies, individuals, researchers, start-ups and established businesses alike.

So far the private sector has been much more backward in coming forward. Analyst Owen Boswarva is one of many people who believe this needs to change, arguing that in some areas the private sector is keeping hold of information that could be put to very good use.

"I'm not talking here about commercially sensitive data that big businesses use to compete in the marketplace ... But the fact is that, in the UK at the moment, companies and business organisations have primary responsibility for maintaining key reference datasets on transport, utilities, banking, the food supply and in many other areas," he writes in his blog.

Meanwhile, the government has called for evidence on the benefits of greater data sharing and use of open data in banking, to support the growth of the UK's financial technology sector.

One person who would be interested in a wider release of private sector data is Pete Williams (pictured), head of enterprise analytics and innovation manager at retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S). He has already gained some interesting insights combining the firm's sales data, especially for food, with weather data from the Met Office, as he explained to Computing.

"What becomes obvious is that it's not just a temperature forecast, it is a perception of temperature. There's a feel-good factor when we have the first bright day after 14 grey days. How does that change somebody's mood and therefore what they buy? That's quite hard to model in the old world, but in the new world using open data and big data platforms we can model that stuff and it becomes really significant."

The retailer makes use of other government datasets too, such as Ordnance Survey mapping data, but Williams says much of the really useful stuff is in private hands.

"The data I really would like to see made open is the sort of data that mobile companies are pushing out at the moment," he said.

"I want to know how the country is used by people. Anything that helps me understand the general movement of the population, what they're doing at various times of the day, and therefore how we can delight them as a retailer giving them what they want...".

At the moment, he said, the four big providers all sell this anonymised aggregated data, but it is fragmented and so it is hard to know which one to buy. He wants to see the government put pressure on the telecoms sector to release this data into the public space, where it can be aggregated and used to give a much clearer picture of population movements.

"A great government initiative might be to have a merged view of how the country is used, where you don't have to fit one lens or another."

In return, he hinted, M&S might well be willing to reciprocate by making its own datasets public.

"I'd be interested in finding out what somebody like M&S could share as open data. I wouldn't want to publish anything that is personal or individual or compromising, but we've got a big global footprint and a significant UK footprint ... why don't we think about ways that the country could be more successful? It's those sort of opportunities that I think are really exciting and are worth further discussion," Williams said.