Green cabinet member Jason Kitcat pledged to support moves towards Brighton and Hove becoming an open data city this evening.
Councillor Kitcat said that he believed in freedom of information in principle.
But he said that making available more of the data held by Brighton and Hove City Council could help the drive to save public money.
Councillor Kitcat, the council’s cabinet member for finance and central services, set out his thoughts and invited ideas at a meeting of Open Data Brighton and Hove.
Phil Jones, of Wired Sussex, and Greg Hadfield, of Cogapp, were among those who contributed to the meeting. Others included Brighton and Hove based software designers and developers.
Councillor Kitcat said that open data was not an end in itself but a halfway point to things that matter much more.