The OFT said it was to look into whether public bodies have an unfair advantage over private companies that reuse the data they supply.
The public bodies, which the OFT calls public sector information holders, include a number of organisations such as Companies House, councils, and the Land Registry. It estimates that in 2003/4 the turnover of the larger information holders was in the region of £1bn.
The investigation will focus on whether current supply arrangements benefit business end users, how public sector data holders price and control access to raw data, and to what extent they are competing with the private sector in selling value-added data.
Penny Boys, OFT executive director, said: "Information is critical in today's knowledge economy and this study will look to see whether there are any hindrances to the development of such information markets when public bodies are also competing to make returns on their own investment."
Richard Gibson, commercial director at list company RSA Direct, said that the decision could have an impact for business-to-business marketers.
"The fact that Companies House information is included is important. Many B2B marketers use this for acquisition as well as segmentation, analysis, referencing and credit checking. Marketers should watch the progress of this study closely as it could impact on the price of data," he said.
Brand Republic contacted a number of consumer and business-to-business data suppliers, but none were willing to comment on the investigation.
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