The man credited with inventing the ‘world wide web', Sir Tim Berners-Lee, is the Whitehall's new adviser on using the Internet to improve the delivery of public information. Sir Tim will have a specific responsibility to improve how the Government uses non-personal public data online. Prime minister, Gordon Brown, confirmed his appointment on 10 June. Reporting to the Cabinet Office, Sir Tim will head an advisory panel overseeing the creation of a single point of access for government data on a range of public policy issues, including schools performances and crime data. He will also handle plans to standardise the way other public bodies present data, making it easier to understand and compare. In a statement on constitutional reform, Mr Brown said: ‘I have asked Sir Tim… to help us drive the opening up of access to government data in the web over coming months.' Sir Tim is credited with ‘inventing' the world wide web, as an Internet-based initiative for global information sharing, while working at CERN – the European particle physics laboratory. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990.
