While apparently being in a position to know,  Mark Birkbeck “speculates” publicly that the UK Gov are using RDFa because:

by using RDFa to mark-up vacancies on each individual government site, it’s possible to allow each [...]]]> No, not a story of intrusion and data-loss, this is data the government should be sharing – job adverts.

While apparently being in a position to know,  Mark Birkbeck “speculates” publicly that the UK Gov are using RDFa because:

by using RDFa to mark-up vacancies on each individual government site, it’s possible to allow each department to publish jobs however it sees fit. Many companies want to have some centralised information, not just government, but this usually involves imposing on each department some new database system or workflow. By using RDFa as the interface, each department merely needs to have the ability to publish HTML, and then they can share their data.

The second[reason] is that by publishing vacancies using RDFa, it’s easy for third-parties to ‘scrape’ the data into their own databases, in a reliable way.

For example, some external company could import all vacancies for a particular region or of a particular type, and then show them on their own site.

Of course, all the benefits he mentioned a provably true – just run a page through a distiller – this is not bleeding edge technology any longer, it’s merely cutting edge.