The move has been welcomed by World Wide Web inventor and Government advisor Tim Berners-Lee. The licence, called the Open Government Licence (OGL), applies across the public sector in all of the UK.
"The Government grants a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual and non-exclusive licence under the conditions laid out in the OGL," said a Government statement. "The OGL governs the re-use of public sector information, including material produced by government departments, Parliaments, agencies, local authorities and Trading Funds, but excludes personal data."
The National Archives, which announced the move, said in a statement that the creation of the licence "is a key element of the Government’s commitment to greater transparency".
"The Open Government Licence is one element of the UK's position at the forefront of the worldwide open data revolution," said Berners-Lee, a member of Government advisory group the Public Sector Transparency Board.
"It’s great to see a simple and straightforward licence for people to re-use government data in any way they want. It will enable inventive people to build innovative new applications and websites which help people in their everyday lives," said Berners-Lee.
"[The licence] will replace the existing Click-Use Licence and enables free re-use of a much broader range of public sector information, including Crown Copyright, databases and source codes," said the National Archives statement. "In addition, the new UK licence will not require users to register or formally apply for permission to re-use data."
"We believe [transparency] is the best way for the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account, encourage innovation and deliver better value for money in public spending," said Francis Maude, minister for the Cabinet Office. "The Open Government Licence signals our commitment not only to publish the data but to allow everyone to use it freely, helping to create a new era of social entrepreneurs."
The Government has produced a framework to govern the use of the licence by Government departments and other public bodies.
"The UK Government Licensing Framework (UKGLF) provides a policy and legal overview for licensing the re-use of public sector information both in central government and the wider public sector," said the National Archives' explanation of the role of the framework. "It sets out best practice, standardises the licensing principles for government information and recommends the use of the UK Open Government Licence (OGL) for public sector information."
The framework makes it compulsory for central Government departments and agencies to use the OGL for their freely available sets of public information.
"[The OGL] removes the existing barriers to re-using information – it is simple, streamlined and a single set of terms and conditions provides assurance to anyone wishing to use or license government information at a glance," said the National Archives statement. "Plus being machine readable it is completely flexible and works in parallel with other internationally-recognised licensing models such as Creative Commons."
When it came into power earlier this year the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government pledged to increase the transparency of Government by publishing more information in its raw form for re-use by the public.
Within a month of coming to power it had published the Combined Online Information System (COINS), a database which details public budgeting and actual spending. It also pledged to publish the details of all new IT contracts from this summer and all contracts from January 2011.
