I think, as with FOI, it will make government more transparent and accountable. I think it does reduce some of the problems caused by old-style FOI, such as the resource costs. Again, I'd agree with John here that some of the really interesting things we'll start to see will be when websites are developed and new applications are developed that allow people to do new things with the information.
I was speaking with one person in the U.K. who created a site called Openly Local, and you can track through 200 different local authorities' spending and find out which companies have been paid by how many local authorities. As this person pointed out, when you can find that 20 local authorities have paid a company, that's interesting, but when you can find that 200 have paid a particular company, then it becomes a different game altogether.
I think it may be in some of the spinoff innovations where we start to see really interesting things happen that could have all sorts of economic, political, and social impacts.