A consortium of 11 UK water companies has won £3.9 million in public funding to build out an ambitious open data project called Stream.
Later this year it will be going to market for a software platform to underpin the open water data project, with the plan including API access to centralised and decentralised datasets. There is a lot of work to do first.
The “Water Breakthrough Challenge” funding, from regulator Ofwat’s innovation fund, comes as it told utilities that it wants to see “faster progress on the delivery of tangible outcomes” for open data projects.
“Progress in developing all open data enablers (such as data infrastructure, data culture and capabilities, collaboration) has been limited across the water sector” Ofwat said in a June 8 report on industry open data progress.
Enter, Stream?
As The Stack reported in 2022, Stream was first proposed by Northumbrian Water Group (NWG) CIO Nigel Watson at an industry dinner. It was submitted by NWG with wide industry backing to Ofwat innovation competition and won £880,000 for an initial pilot programme last year.
