Ofgem's Data Best Practice Guidance sets the data obligations of Great Britain's energy network licensees. Published in November 2021 and applied through licence conditions under the RIIO price controls, its defining principle is that Energy System Data is "presumed open" — a licensee must publish unless it can justify withholding. It is an open-data mandate aimed at network operational data rather than at consumer data, and it is the reason British distribution networks publish better than the utilities of any mandated market studied.
Ofgem Data Best Practice Guidance
Regulator guidance Great Britain
Ofgem’s Data Best Practice Guidance is the most under-discussed data mandate in this catalog, and on the evidence it is one of the most effective.
It applies to Great Britain’s network licensees — the distribution and transmission operators — through licence conditions attached to the RIIO price controls. Version 1.0 landed in November 2021. The principle that matters is “presumed open”: Energy System Data must be published unless the licensee can justify not publishing it. The default is inverted from almost every other regime in this catalog.
- A licence condition, not a statute - enforcement runs through the regulator’s control of the licence rather than through a court, which makes it fast to apply and specific to the licensed party.
- Aimed at network data, not customer data - it covers substation capacity, outages, connections and system data. It is not a consumer data right, and Great Britain still has none.
- Presumption inverted - most regimes require disclosure of enumerated things. This one requires disclosure of everything, with the burden on the licensee to argue otherwise.
- Attached to a price control - RIIO funds network investment, so digitalisation obligations arrive with the money rather than as an unfunded requirement.
What it produced
The State of UK Energy APIs scored twenty-six organizations and found the distribution networks at the top of the machine-readable rankings. UK Power Networks and Northern Powergrid both score 94.2 on agent-readiness — the highest figures in the entire four-market energy study, above anything in mandate-driven Australia. Electricity North West follows at 79.8, SSEN at 78.8.
These are regional monopolies with no competitive pressure and no consumer-facing data obligation. The guidance is what explains them, and it is worth stating precisely because it is easy to misread the result as voluntary excellence. It was not. Britain aimed a real open-data obligation at network operational data and got world-class results exactly where it aimed.
The counter-example inside the same regime is instructive: National Grid Electricity Distribution scores 35.1 with 28.8 agent-readiness under the identical price control and identical licence condition. The obligation sets a floor, not an outcome.
Read alongside the Consumer Data Right, which aimed a comparable instrument at customer data in Australia and produced thirteen live consumer APIs. Britain and Australia both mandated. They mandated different things, and each got what it asked for.
Referenced in API Evangelist papers
This regulation shows up in my published research. These reports read the machine-readable evidence provider by provider — and put this regulation in the context of a real sector.
The State of UK Energy APIs
The reason Britain's distribution networks out-publish every mandated market in the study — UK Power Networks and Northern Powergrid both hit 94.2 agent-readiness under a 'presumed open' licence condition, not a consumer data right.
Implemented by these standards
A regulation is the law; a standard is the machine-readable contract that makes it real. These are the technical standards that implement this regulation, catalogued at standards.apievangelist.com.
OpenAPI
The DNO open-data portals publish OpenAPI 3.0.3 contracts alongside DCAT catalogues to satisfy the guidance.
