SAN CARLOS, Calif. And London, UK—July 29, 2010 — MarkLogic Corporation, a leading provider of information infrastructure software, today announced a strategic partnership with TSO (The Stationery Office), part of the Williams Lea Group and a provider of information management and publishing solutions to the public sector. Publishing over 8,000 titles a year, TSO is the largest publisher in the UK by volume and specializes in the creation, production, and distribution of information in print, online, and in electronic formats. MarkLogic will support TSO’s drive to enable core public sector customers to participate in the UK government’s open data initiative.
In January 2010 the UK government announced its intention to open up its own free public data initiative in order to achieve greater transparency. The website, www.data.gov.uk, is dedicated to making non-personal data held by the government available for software developers. Beginning in July 2010, UK government departments and agencies are required to ensure that any information published includes the underlying data in an open, standardized format. Information will be catalogued and published as open linked data to give the public an unprecedented level of access and insight into government and to drive innovative re-use of public data.
TSO is at the forefront of the Transparent Government Initiative, hosting both www.data.gov.uk and the newly launched www.legislation.gov.uk as well as a number of other key databases. The new legislation.gov.uk will replace The National Archives’ existing official legislation websites – The Statute Law Database (www.statutelaw.gov.uk) and www.opsi.gov.uk to create a single point of access to UK legislation and help enable UK citizens to scrutinize the law upon which their legal rights and responsibilities are based. The demand for accessing this data is exceptionally high with the original OPSI website receiving on average over one and a half million unique visitors per month, generating almost sixteen million page impressions, and containing over 350,000 pages with over 100,000 documents and a quarter of a million xHTML chunks. By partnering with MarkLogic, TSO is able to use leading edge technology that provides it with a powerful and scalable XML repository to host, publish, repurpose, and deliver content in a more agile, efficient way and at a lower cost. These are all key components to TSO’s ongoing work with the new legislation.gov.uk site.
“The open data initiative will not only lead to increased government transparency, but will also provide a much more effective and intuitive way of seeking out public information,” said Mark Tice, executive vice president of worldwide sales, MarkLogic. “At a time when efficiency savings are crucial, all eyes will be on those involved to get this right. We look forward to working with TSO to bring this vision of truly open data to the public.”
“As an organization, we strive to help our customers transform the way they communicate with internal and external audiences. The open data initiative is an exciting component of this,” said Terry Blake, technical services director, TSO. “In order to get there we need technology partners that can deliver large scale, robust platforms to government departments to enable them to host and publish their data.”
MarkLogic Server is a purpose-built database for unstructured information. Its advantages over traditional DBMS technologies include higher performance and scalability, lower administrative overhead, and faster application development cycles. With extensive production deployments, MarkLogic Server is a proven technology for a wide variety of information applications that store, search, analyze, and deliver information. Its service-oriented architecture (SOA) and use of standards-based web technologies enable easy integration with existing infrastructures. Based on patented innovations, MarkLogic Server enables customers in industries including media, government, and financial services to develop and deploy rich information applications at a fraction of the time and cost as compared to conventional approaches.
TSO (The Stationery Office) is the leading provider of information management and publishing solutions to the public sector. TSO is the largest publisher by volume in the UK, publishing more than 8,000 titles a year in print and digital formats. Their experts help to create, structure, capture, transform and deliver some of the most important government information. TSO provides services, consultancy and infrastructure to deliver all aspects of the information lifecycle to the highest standards for their clients.
TSO has been at the forefront of working with public sector clients to open up published data. TSO create tools and processes to allow data to be created in a structured way; enrich data using text engineering techniques; convert data into formats to publish as linked data on the web and provide and host web environments that allow both humans and machines to access the data.
Privatized from HMSO (now The National Archives) in 1996, TSO was acquired in 2007 by Williams Lea, the leading global provider of Corporate Information Solutions. For more information visit www.tso.co.uk