History of the Data Office

The Data Office of the Velocity Interoperability Network is a young institution. The milestones below record its establishment and will be extended as the catalogue grows and the Office's services come into full operation.

1. Before September 2026

   Data held separately by each member organisation

   Before the Office existed, each member organisation of the Network kept its own records and published such data as it chose, in its own formats and under its own terms. There was no common catalogue, no register of what was held, no shared identifiers by which records could be joined, and no single route for asking for data that had not been published.

2. 10 August to 5 September 2026

   The transition period and the inventory of holdings

   In the four weeks before establishment, every department and network service made a return of its principal data holdings to the incoming Office, recording the controlling body, the classification, the retention period and the publication status of each. The returns became the register of data holdings, which recorded 212 holdings at establishment. Twenty-seven staff transferred from the data and records functions of member organisations.

3. 6 September 2026

   Data Office established

   The Data Office of the Velocity Interoperability Network was formally established, with responsibility for the publication of open data by the departments and network services of the Network, for the register of their data holdings, for the standards to which data is published and for handling requests for data that has not been published.

4. 6 September 2026

   Official website launched

   The Office launched data.gov.vin, carrying the open data catalogue, the register of data holdings, the data standards, guidance on requesting data and on licensing and reuse, and the Office's press releases and official statements.

5. 6 September 2026

   First datasets published

   Eighteen datasets from sixteen departments and network services were published in the catalogue, containing some 2.4 million records, with forty-six further datasets scheduled for publication by 31 December 2026.

6. 6 September 2026

   Request service opened; licence and standards adopted

   The data request service opened, with acknowledgement within two working days and a response within twenty. The Network Open Data Licence and the first edition of the data publication standards were adopted, applying to every dataset in the catalogue.

7. Forthcoming

   Further releases, query-based access and the first report on requests

   Forty-six further datasets are scheduled for publication by 31 December 2026. Arrangements for query-based access to the catalogue are being settled with the Developer Portal. The Office's first quarterly report on requests, covering the quarter ending 31 December 2026, will be published in January 2027. Each will be announced in the Newsroom.

Announcements are published in the Newsroom. For the Office's present responsibilities, see About the Data Office; for the datasets published to date, see Open Data.