The UK government is the most open and transparent in the world, according to rankings looking at the public availability of official data.
The Open Data Barometer is produced by the World Wide Web Foundation, an organisation founded by Web inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, as a way to rank governments for the data the offer to the public and how easy that data is to analyse.
The report ranked 86 countries and found the UK government the best at providing access to public data in accessible and open formats, with the US and Sweden coming second and third.
However, Berners-Lee made clear that while the UK may lead the table, the country still has “a long way to go” before it becomes a fully open government.
He went on to say that 90% of the countries surveyed failed to honour their transparency commitments, with data that could help reduce corruption and improve government efficiency still hidden from public view.
The report found that of the countries analysed, just 8% publish open data on government spending, 6% publish open data on government contracts, and a mere 3% publish open data on the ownership of companies.