To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what plans he has for the open document standard in which future data releases are to be published; and if he will make a statement.

I will be seeking the advice of the Public Sector Transparency Board on the open standardised formats to be used for future data releases; they in turn will involve and engage developers and others likely to use the data. Where possible we will use recognised open standards including Linked Data standards.

However I do not wish discussion of standards to delay the initial release of key datasets, and so for these we will where necessary use widely accepted basic formats (such as Delimiter Separated Variable format, as used for the Treasury COINS database) and listen to feedback from developers and data users in improving the formats for subsequent releases.