The announcement by Prime Minister Gordon Brown late in 2009 that the government intends to allow freer use of geographical and location data created by Ordnance Survey was the latest twist in a debate which has raged for decades. Small companies, public bodies and others have complained for some time that they should not have to pay for digital maps and other information gathered by a public agency.
But while Mr Brown’s new pledge does represent a shift in Whitehall thinking, the government is initially merely consulting on “policy options”, and the document’s timing just before a general election adds uncertainty as to which will ultimately be selected.
The background to this debate is that in 1973, Ordnance Survey was converted to a ‘trading fund’. While remaining under overall government control, it is allowed to trade, making profits from selling goods and services to subsidise its own costs and pay back dividends to its ‘owner’ department Communities and Local Government (other such funds include the Meteorological Office, UK Hydrographic Office, HM Land Registry, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and Companies House).
It is hard for such a body to give away information for free. However this could be a false economy, since geographical information systems offer great potential to improve the targeting of public services, increasing service quality and cutting costs.
In summer 2009, Scottish health authority NHS Lothian signed up to join the national ‘One Scotland Mapping Agreement’ with Ordnance Survey. Dr Alison McCallum, Director of Public Health and Health Policy at the authority, said: “One of NHS Lothian’s main priorities is tackling health inequalities, and access to this mapping data makes it easier to identity and target areas where people have poor health” (http://bit.ly/8NxAQ7).
Braintree District Council is one of many to use GIS on its public-facing website, with a ‘LocalView’ mapping system helping residents report road and pavement defects, flooding, fly tipping and other issues (http://localview.braintree.gov.uk/localview/).
Maps are also a powerful way of simply presenting useful data. The award-winning Environment Agency system ‘What’s in Your Back Yard?’ (http://bit.ly/7fWPPi) provides localised data to citizens on a wide range of topics including air pollution and drinking water quality.
South Wales Fire and Rescue has developed an innovative system linking live vehicle location technology with map-based information to allow fire crews to access relevant data live as they speed to the scene of an incident.
The system uses Ordnance Survey (OS) MasterMap data to plan routes and highlight other relevant local information: as the fire appliance nears the scene this switches to detailed building and even room plans derived from CAD (computer-aided design) safety plans filed with the authority by owners of large buildings.
The OS data currently carries a significant cost for the authority. Andy Marles, Chief Fire Officer with South Wales, says: “We pay for the data through the mapping services agreement [a bulk procurement agreement for councils negotiated with Ordnance Survey and two other data suppliers by the local government Improvement and Development Agency: http://bit.ly/5toGeU ].
“This saves us tendering individually [but] it is not cheap – in the tens of thousands. But it is vital to what we do and we have to have it, so we just pay up and get on with it.”
Currently, almost all geographical data gathered by Ordnance Survey incurs usage fees. Total revenues for the agency have remained steady at just over £100 million for the past three years (around £114m in 2006-07; £117m in 2007-08 and £116m in £2008-09, with profits of around £16m last year). It does not currently receive any direct subsidy from government, though its indirect revenue from the public purse through data sales to public bodies is substantial, amounting to around half of its total income.
Much debate has centred on the question of whether it is right to charge other public sector bodies for use of OS data.
In responding to the 2009 OS business review, some public sector bodies pressed for greater freedom to reuse OS data, if such ‘derived data’ underpinned public services. One said:
“If a public sector body uses OS base mapping to determine the co-ordinates of its service locations, it should be able to make this information freely available without any licensing restriction.
“The same goes for information originally collected by the public sector body and supplied to the Ordnance Survey: OS should not be able to claim rights over that data simply because it has re-packaged it and sold it back to the body concerned. Examples include gazetteer and rights-of-way information.
“In other words, we need a clear and restrictive definition of ‘derived data’ that specifically excludes information originated by a public body, even if it used Ordnance Survey base mapping as a way of identifying the relevant grid co-ordinates.”
All eyes are now on the outcome of the new consultation process, announced by the Prime Minister and overseen by the Department of Communities and Local Government: ‘Policy options for geographic information from Ordnance Survey’ (http://bit.ly/7PXc0A).
The consultation, which runs to 17 March 2010, sets out three main options: retaining the status quo (though with simplifications of the pricing structure as already announced in last year’s OS business review); releasing licensing constraints on most data; and a halfway house of removing constraints on some data while moving gradually towards further reform.
Under option two, the most radical, the paper envisages a split between a fully subsidised data gathering business and a separate product development and distribution arm, which would operate in a fully competitive environment, and most likely be privatised.
The paper suggests that any released, unrestricted data package, referred to as ‘Ordnance Survey Free’, would also contain OS ‘Code-Point ®’ data, linking postcodes to map locations. However in a reference to the situation regarding Royal Mail it says: “Although Code-Point ® is being considered for release it should be noted that there are additional rights holders for the product in addition to Ordnance Survey and it will be necessary to obtain agreement from these third parties before the product can be made freely available” (para 7.13).
One possible solution would be to create a single national address register combing OS, Royal Mail, local authority and other relevant data to oversee release of postcode data, the report says.
Overall, the paper identifies several key benefits of freeing up more data. These include the improvement of government transparency and accountability, leading to better government decision-making; and innovation in the broader GI community.
Challenges would include filling a revenue gap for OS of up to £24m a year, plus new operating costs of up to £8m a year, at least in the short term. There is also a risk that some OS partners, distributors and competitors could be adversely affected by any data release, for example retail outlets selling maps. In the longer term, however, new commercial opportunities would outweigh these losses, the paper says.
It would be wrong to conclude, however, that the only potential challenges arising from removing data restrictions are financial. One leading analyst – Michael Blakemore, Emeritus Professor of Geography at Durham University – says data quality could suffer.
“Giving everything away for free is not always the ideal solution.
“When NOMIS, the official labour market statistics service from the Office of National Statistics ( https://www.nomisweb.co.uk ), went free, quite a few users felt the quality of service declined. You need to figure out what you are trying to achieve”.
There are also signs that the culture of free information which has characterised what are still the early days of the internet is beginning to change, Professor Blakemore says. “We need to look at what’s happened in the commercial sector over the past seven or eight years: we’ve been given the best free information we’ve ever had, but now the doors are starting to shut. Pricing models are unstable.”
Clearly a balance must be struck between price, innovation, ownership and regulation: no easy task, in the emotive field of public data.
NOTE: This article is an edited extract from the new PITCOM (Parliamentary IT Committee) briefing on the future of Ordnance Survey. MPs and Peers founded PITCOM in 1981 to provide a bridge between Parliament and the IT industry. E-Government Bulletin publisher Headstar is the official writer of PITCOM meeting reports and technology briefings for Parliamentarians. For all PITCOM meeting reports and briefings, see:
NOTE: Article originally published in E-Government Bulletin issue 306.
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