The move is a response to public campaigns that have long demanded that the Govermnent take advantage of internet technologies to make useful public data and the information on which state bodies base their decisions and actions publicly accessible.
"We will empower patients, parents, pupils and citizens in new ways with better more personal more interactive services that put them, the users, in charge," said Prime Minister Gordon Brown, launching the initiative.
The Government has said that data will be published in reusable, machine-readable form and will be published through a single website, www.data.gov.uk. It will be published in open formats approved by standards body the World Wide Web Consortium and commercial as well as non-commercial reuse will be permitted.
"Releasing data can and must unleash the innovation and entrepreneurship at which Britain excels - one of the most powerful forces of change we can harness," said Brown.
Firm commitments were made to release information from the National Public Transport Access Node database by April of next year; Met Office weather information; Government spending information broken down to local specifics; and publishing scientific research.
But some of the most commercially useful information created by the public sector is the mapping
data controlled by the Ordnance Survey and postcode databases. The Government only committed to consulting on the release of this information. That consultation will take place from April next year.
The Government also said that it would encourage local authorities not only to share their data but to participate in a data exchange where it could be combined with data from other authorities and reused.
"An information revolution is giving people new powers over the choices they make for themselves and their families," said Brown. "People have rising expectations and aspirations. They want a bigger say and greater accountability in the public sector with services that are universal but also personal and of the highest quality. We expect to be able to get the information we need when we want it. We expect online access to see what our children are learning and how they are getting on."
The Government said that the move was partly a result of the report of the Power Of Information Taskforce, which built on work already carried out by mySociety founder and open information campaigner Tom Steinberg.
When delivering his first report to Government in 2007, Steinberg said: “around the world, the first phase of Government use of the internet is coming to an end with public services and information largely online. We are now at the start of a new era, where Government starts to learn how to support citizens' own ways of making, finding and re–using information online".
