It is official!

For those not familiar with the Web 2.0 numeric data utility Swivel - their mission “is to liberate the world’s data and make it useful so new insights can be discovered and shared”. However, it looks like Swivel are going official! Some NGOs are directly uploading their data into Swivel while in other cases Swivel are gathering data directly from ‘official’ Web sites such as OECD, ILO, UNESCO, WHO - see http://www.swivel.com/official. Other than exposing their data (and ultimately their commercial products) to a wider audience are there other motives (other than altruism) or implications that can be drawn from this news?

Stuart Macdonald