To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills what (a) benchmarks and (b) targets he has set for the Open Data Immersion Programme and its delivery.

The Open Data Immersion Programme comprises a series of events with prizes to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups to work with data owners to better understand how to re-use data sets in ways which create business opportunities.

This is a new programme and no benchmarks currently exist but we will build the baseline from the first event in the programme. The target will be to provide support for as many market potential products as emanate from the events and will be dependent on the quality of the ideas from SME participants. It is therefore not feasible to set a target for the programme. However, the programme will be subject to an independent impact evaluation.