Consumer Focus Labs

We like data at CF Labs – indeed we’d be nothing without lots of lovely data to build our apps around. So it’s logical that we’re committed to opening up and sharing data that we feel is in the public interest but is withheld unnecessarily or unfairly – think raw, infinitely useful data idling on dusty government shelves (virtually speaking) or customer account data (including YOUR personal information) locked-down in alcatraz-like corporate silos.

We’ve been feeling our way around in this area, submitting pilot Data Protection Act and Freedom of Information requests to various bodies in an effort to hone our information-extracting skills to the level of some of the more frequent denizens over at the excellent WhatDoTheyKnow.com. Our exploits thus far are documented in the new DataBlog section here on the site. Definitely worth a read in the case of one big commercial concern at least.

But we haven’t stopped there. As firm believers in the principles of leading by example, share and share alike and giving something back, we’re currently involved in exploring ways of getting Consumer Focus data out there for use by the development community. CF commissions veritable mountains of research on an enormous range of consumer-related subjects which, after inclusion in reports, invariably ends up languishing on the system in a folder within a folder within a long-forgotten folder. It’s a common situation. Fortunately, CF shares our vision of sharing the data and to this end we’re investigating the status of licensing agreements between CF and its research contractors to make this happen at a point in the not too distant future – watch this space for developments.