Gordon Brown has pulled his latest ‘celeb-endorsed’ coup out of the bag today as Sir Tim Berners-Lee launched a new website to provide public access to Government data.

Often wrongly described as the ‘inventor of the Internet’, the man who actually created the World World Web was brought on board by the Prime Minister last year to create the Data.gov.uk website. The aim of this is to act as a central hub for NHS figures, crime data, environmental studies and more (though access isn’t necessarily free as it’s been suggested that the Government isn’t keen to give up its royalties). Basic applications already built around the data include a service that allows you to source your local NHS dentist, or track the value of your house over time.

Berners-Lee claims the site will help stop the expensively acquired Government data going to waste, as he told the BBC. “It’s such an untapped resource. Government data is something we have already spent the money on… and when it is sitting there on a disk in somebody’s office it is wasted.”

Brown’s recent appointments of high profile business figures such as Sir Alan Sugar and Martha Lane Fox were  criticised at the time. It hasn’t exactly been damaging (though was dismissed as headline grabbing) but has put the individuals in question under fervent scrutiny, with every slight mistake becoming a major issue.

The new site seems to have been readily accepted over the first few days of its inception, possibly due to Berners-Lee’s Web credentials (which seem to have been accepted as more credible than his predecessors). The focus has shifted away from the ‘celebrity’ and back onto the site, which is faring well so far apart from a slight lag in loading time due to heavy traffic. But when Berners-Lee steps away from the spotlight, where does that leave Brown?