Socitm response to Ordnance Survey consultation says base level geographic data should be freely available for non-commercial use

• Full cost should be met by Government and can be justified
• Potential cost savings from 'whole place' approach to local public service delivery could be undermined if appropriate business model not found for OS

Socitm, the association for IT and related professionals working in the public and third sectors, has responded to the Government's consultation on future options around licensing and use of geographic information from Ordnance Survey (OS).

 

In this response, now available on the Socitm website, it says that base level geographic data should be freely available for non-commercial use - something it believes is not guaranteed under any of the three options set out in the consultation document.

 

Socitm also emphasises that, without an appropriate business model being found for Ordnance Survey, significant savings from new approaches to local service delivery based on collaboration between public agencies in the same geographical location (e.g. health, local government, blue-light services), could be undermined.

 

Financial austerity and increasing demands on public services have led to some innovative thinking about the 'whole system' of public services delivery in places/localities and the potential for reducing duplication by different agencies working in the same place. This vision for public services makes new demands upon information resources, including geographic information. Public services will need to create and share information with partners, in order to uncover the character of places, identify communities and constituencies, understand needs and preferences of people, groups and businesses, corral all public expenditure on services and interventions in places, and fundamentally reorganise services and accountability around outcomes that matter in these places.

 

In order to encourage these developments, the geographical information needed to support them needs to be free, including data only available on OS MasterMap. Any proposals that would increase costs for local authorities and other local public services, therefore inhibiting innovative re-use of local geographic data should be resisted.

 

The full cost of data made available for free should be met by Government. This can be fully justified in the context of a place-based, whole public services approach, where costs and benefits may accrue to different services (including the OS), but the overall economic and social well-being of places is enhanced.

 

Socitm agrees with the principle of a single National Address Register, but points out that the consultation paper barely touches on the mechanisms to deliver it. The NLPG is a well-established service used nationally by local authorities and a growing band of other public sector services. Rather than reinvent the wheel, Socitm believes that any proposal for a single National Address Register should be based on the NLPG.

 

Apart from any activity by public agencies, Socitm also believes free or low cost geographic data should be made available to the wide range of social entrepreneurs, groups and individuals who are starting to develop 'mash-ups' and other innovative uses of public data for the public benefit. Providing geographic data to such groups would act as a stimulus to this kind of innovation at a local level, and would be consistent with the more open approach with government data characterised by the Making Public Data Public (www.data.gov.uk) project and proposals in the recent Smarter Government paper.

 

Finally, the usability benefits of map-based rather than text-based information is well known, and offers important benefits in terms of service delivery, ease of access to information, and citizen engagement - all priorities for Smarter Government. Given that the public has paid for OS geographic data to be collected, and for the mapping systems it runs on, Socitm believes a strong argument exists for making that geographic data more freely available, consistent with the Making Public Data Public (www.data.gov.uk) project.

 

According to Martin Ferguson, Socitm's Head of Policy and author of the consultation response there is a growing appetite for digital, geographic data: 'Local authorities are custodians of significant amounts of spatially referenced data, and could play a significant role in stimulating innovative applications of geographic information for the benefit and well-being of the communities they serve' he says. 'However, we need to remove the costs of licensing and of obtaining legal advice and subsequent interpretation and administration of OS licence terms that is currently hampering our aspirations in this area, and we are strongly opposed to any proposals that would increase costs for local authorities and inhibit innovative re-use of local geographic data.'

 

 

Further information:

 

Martin Ferguson
Socitm Head of Policy
martin.ferguson@socitm.gov.uk
Mobile: 07931 456 238

 

Vicky Sargent
Socitm Press Office
vicky.sargent@socitm.net
Mobile: 07726 601 139