Bizwiki, the UK Business Wiki site founded on the principle of allowing users free access to edit, update and add data to business records, has joined the call to free access to parts of the data held by government departments.

“We’ve seen just how much demand there is for relevant information online, to the degree that thousands of people have signed up over the last 12 months to help Bizwiki compile and improve records about local businesses across the country,’ said Matt Aird, co-founder of Bizwiki.co.uk.

‘What we are now asking is that the government move to make more taxpayer’s data available to them. In short, we believe that access to publicly acquired data should be free.’

‘Free access to public datasets would have a huge impact on usability and accuracy,’ added Keith Hinde, Chief Technical Architect for Bizwiki. ‘By cross referencing businesses people list on Bizwiki with Companies House data, we could provide a cleaner, deeper and more reliable dataset to end users, reducing the need for manual moderation or checking.’

‘Using PAF data, we could enhance usability and consistency with guided address editing or detailed validation’, he continued. ‘With access to the Ordnance Survey’s AddressPoint data, we could provide much more accurate plotting of businesses on maps, making it easier for customers to locate businesses and hopefully reducing the time spent driving around trying to locate a particular business.’

Agencies ranging from the Ordnance Survey to the Highways Agency are either government-owned or receive large portions of their income from the public sector or taxpayer, but charge for data with exacting copyright restrictions that prevent or hamper re-use of the data.

Following in the footsteps of the Guardian Technology’s drive for free public access to data about the UK and its citizens and organisations such as INSPIRE’s campaign ‘State-collected Geographic Data is public property’, Bizwiki is joining the argument in favour of liberating public access to non-confidential company and mapping data.

‘If there is one thing that the growth of the business on the internet has shown us, it’s that there are tremendous benefits to making more data available to people for free,’ concluded Matt Aird.

For more information about Bizwiki, the free business wiki that anyone can edit, see http://www.bizwiki.co.uk

For more information about INSPIRE, see http://publicgeodata.org/

For more information about The Guardian’s Free our Data Campaign http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/

Started in 2006 and open as a public-beta since June of last year, Bizwiki is finally officially live today. We’re cutting the ribbon (or more literally, removing the Beta ribbon that’s been on the top left of all pages since last June) and announcing the site more widely to the general public.

We are very happy to be able to say that Bizwiki has already had over two thousand people sign up to help add content and edit the site, with many more expected now that the site is officially live. Now is a good time to thank everyone who has contributed to making this site what it is, thank you.

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It’s all passed in a blur of new features being added, people signing up, improvements being made and a large amount of contributions to the information on the site, but believe it or not Bizwiki has now been live to the public for six months.

And what an eventful six months they have been, too.

We have continuously been impressed with the quality of information that has been added by the general public. Yes, there has been the occasional piece of ‘self-promotion’ or advertising-copy masquerading as a review, but that’s par for the course on the modern internet and most of these have been removed within hours. What is far more impressive is the amount of businesses that have been added, contributions submitted and genuine reviews we have received from people who are trying to help improve the quality of information available for others.

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Bizwiki is now live to the public as a beta! A lot of work remains to be done, and the team is feverishly slaving away on the full version of the site, but in the meantime we’ve opened it up for people to have a look around. Please feel free to sign up, look around, try it out and comment on absolutely anything! If you come across a serious error or problem on the site, feel free to report it.

I think the best description of the technical team behind Bizwiki is ‘Nervously Proud’. Imagine a new father outside a maternity ward, waiting to hear whether all the fingers and toes arrived with the main package, and you probably have it in a nutshell.

But most importantly, welcome to the Bizwiki Beta, a taste of what’s to come in the world of online business!

This is the first post, so perhaps the best start would be to offer an introduction. This is the official blog for Bizwiki, a user edited site for businesses, companies and organisations that we hope will grow into one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive business directories on the web.

That is quite a challenge, and in order to accomplish it we are inviting users, business owners, company managers, consumers, clients and customers to get involved and increase the information available for everyone to use.

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