Water companies to be legally obliged to share data

Water companies will be legally obliged to share certain data sets with the public, under licence changes being developed by Ofwat.

The regulator has yet to specify which data sets water companies would have to open up.

However it has begun the process of developing a licence condition that will provide new powers to ensure companies deliver on the challenge.

The move comes following widespread calls for the sector to be more transparent. This includes a House of Lords Regulators Committee report published earlier this year, which called for water companies to take more action to provide open data on the environmental performance of their wastewater network and treatment works.

Lisa Commane, Ofwat chief operating officer, said: “We are challenging companies to show proactive leadership and go further and faster to open up their data.

“Ofwat, together with the public, expects to see water companies making tangible progress towards the establishment of an open and trustworthy data ecosystem. This needs to happen now and we will look to underpin this with new Ofwat powers where progress falters.

“Learning from other sectors shows that as well as having established data infrastructure, companies must embed a stronger data culture, bring capability and skills into the sector and improve collaboration to speed up delivery. We expect water companies to be able to demonstrate more evidence of tangible progress during 2023 and 2024.”

Ahead of the condition being implemented into companies licences, Ofwat has asked them to:

• Identify priority data sets for release
• Review datasets that have so far only been shared with limited groups and take steps to make them openly available
• Show proactive leadership to develop and publish a clear roadmap by October this year for open data delivery for the industry
• Release data sets with an open licence to encourage information to be freely used

Ofwat has previously found in its 2021 report H2Open, Open data in the water industry that there would be significant benefits to customers, the environment and society from water companies opening their data.

Earlier this year, Ofwat slammed water companies for obscuring their financial datasets ordering all but three companies to be more transparent with its reporting.

In May, the regulator also awarded £4 million to an open data project called Stream. The project aims to deliver infrastructure that will allow users to search, understand and access open and shared data, and allow providers to publish data openly and share sensitive data securely.