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www.data.gov.uk launched today, which sees the government join – and arguably take a lead in – the ‘open data revolution.’

You can read all about it here and at the site’s own blog.

At time of writing the web site was crashing and no doubt there will be lots of coverage on another Government failure.  However, at its launch there are bound to be glitches and to focus on the negative would be the narrow minded thing to do.  Let’s instead look at something all together more interesting.

What does this mean for the vast majority of UK businesses?  It means that more data than ever is available.   The availability of ‘perfect information’ is one of the key tenets of the free market, so making this content available is arguably going to create efficiencies.

Crucially, third party developers can now create their own applications to process the data.  These are then uploaded onto the site and available to all.  There are already applications available such as this one which looks at house prices.

From a PR and marketing perspective there are two immediately interesting considerations:

• Does the ability to build applications for clients present a commercial opportunity?  For example, agencies could build an augmented reality tourism guide for UK cities, which might be ideal for hotels, or leisure sector organisations?  Consultancies might choose to create an ‘economic report’ application, for accountancy firms or banking clients.  There are endless options here for consultancies to consider.

• Is the site a risk for the Government that could backfire?  For example, how will the Government be able to manage the development of third party applications?  How long will it be until, say, the Conservative party build an application which turns the Government’s own data on itself?  We have already seen The Guardian use crowd sourcing to examine MPs expenses and this sort of content will be much easier to create thanks to this website.  Will the Government fall on its sword?  Or, will a mischievous anarchist group or a terrorist organisation build applications which can be used against the state.  Imagine the negative headlines!

The latter point, of course, is the product of an over fertile imagination and one would think that the Government has already weighed up the risks.

Launching the site is a brave move and let’s hope that it proves to be successful.  The Office of National Statistics’ website was always slow and clunky to interrogate.  It helped if users had a grasp of advanced statistics, to really make the data work for you.

Now, via the third party applications, access to data should be a lot easier.

‘Homeworking’ just hit a bit of a benchmark throughout the region.

Britain doesn’t do extreme weather very well and, unless you really like risk, using a car wasn’t a great choice in the worst snow the North West has seen for decades. First thing this morning, public transport websites were crashing faster than a philandering golfer.

Like many Manchester PR agencies, Citypress employs a number of people who live in the city centre. Without the need to consult confusing fake social media sites for travel information, the biggest barrier to those commuting on foot was trying to avoid dozens of people shuffling through the slippery conditions, looking at their feet while shouting ‘Yeah, it’s really snowing!’ into a ‘phone.

In the suburbs it’s safe to say that the email subject line ‘working from home’ was quite popular. A high percentage of employees in the region put the kettle on and took their technological connectivity for granted, answering emails with one thumb while stirring their tea.

At the beginning of the last decade, not being at your desk meant more disruption. Putting in calls to clients, ‘getting stuff in your book’ and writing press releases – on a PC if you were one of the 30 per cent of households sporting a home computer 10 years ago (compared to almost 80 per cent at the end of the ‘noughties’).*

You would even have been able to email your work to the office via dial-up if you were among the 10 per cent of early adopters who had an internet connection. Even then, sending anything larger than a web document took hours, a stark contrast to this morning when everyone on Twitter had posted a picture of their road/car/balcony/driveway by 8am.

None of these things are a modern concern for the snowed in PR person. ‘Working from home’ is such a seamless transition that we barely think about what impact, if any, it will have on our ability to do our jobs or for clients to contact us. Direct telephone lines re-routed, smartphones in hand, you don’t really even need a desk.

Of course this is all totally relevant if you work for a PR agency in Manchester and absolutely no use at all if you’re a bus driver.

*Office for National Statistics