OS to offer free map data?

At a seminar on Smarter Government the Prime Minister and Communities Secretary John Denham announced that the public will have more access to Ordnance Survey maps from next year, as part of a Government drive to open up data to improve transparency.

There seemed to be quite a bit of emphasis on data relating to electoral and local authority boundaries and postcode areas as a first step with some side mention to making mid scale mapping available.

There was also mention of making this data more freely available with the hope this will encourage more effective exploitation of public data by businesses, individuals and community organisations.

In the new year Brown intends to publish 2,000 sets of data, possibly including all legislation, as well as road-traffic counts over the past eight years, property prices listed with the stamp-duty yield, motoring offences with types of offence and the numbers, by county, for the top six offences.

It was quoted in the press that the Prime Minister said “by April he hoped a consultation would be completed on the free provision of Ordnance Survey maps down to a scale of 1:10,000, (not the scale of a typical Landranger map set at 1:50,000) … The online maps would be free to all, including commercial users…”

Following this announcement Liam Byrne, Chief Secretary to the Treasury presented a paper called Putting the Frontline First: smarter government, in which he states:

We will release valuable public datasets and make them free for reuse. this will include:

• Releasing health data such as the NHS Choices data
• Consulting on making Ordnance Survey mapping and postcode datasets available for free reuse from April 2010
• Increasing access to and reuse of public transport data29 including the national Public transport Access node database, with information available to the development community by April 2010, providing live incident warnings and traffic camera images to googleMaps™ and increasing the number of gps-enabled buses to cover 80% of journeys by 2015
• Opening Met Office Public Weather Service data to include: releasing significant underlying data for weather forecasts for free download and reuse by April 2010, and working to further expand the release of weather data, while recognising all public safety considerations; releasing a free iPhone application to access weather data by April 2010; releasing a widget that enables other websites to deploy Met office supplied weather information by April 2010; and making available more information on Met office scientists, their work and scientific papers, free of charge.

On the other side, this seems to have caught the OS somewhat by surprise, in fact no-one from the OS was even at the announcement which is bizarre since this could be the biggest single change to the way OS licensing and pricing works.

In response the OS said “The detail of this is still being worked through and a formal consultation period will begin in December to look at how these changes will be implemented. Ordnance Survey is committed to working with colleagues across government on developing these proposals … Since May 2009 we have been in the process of implementing our new business strategy and we believe that much of this is still very relevant as we move forward.”

Also, in what seemed to almost be a parry to the announcement, Ordnance Survey Chairman Sir Rob Margetts says: “I am delighted that the Prime Minister and John Denham have today made these proposals about releasing for free some of Ordnance Survey’s data to support innovation, accountability and growth. I also very much welcome the commitment made by Government to contribute to the cost of this. This on-going commitment is fundamental to maintaining the sustained quality of Ordnance Survey’s data that has made the organisation a world leader in its field. The Board of Ordnance Survey will work very closely with Government, as well as our customers, partners and others to ensure that the proposals are fully developed for consultation and implementation next year.”

The union representing staff at the OS stated that Brown’s pledge was in “complete contradiction with the OS’s own plans to explore commercial opportunities and find new ways of raising revenue”.

On the face of it, it all sounds very promising, however, there is lots of talk and no clear statement of what is actually proposed, which datasets and for what purpose.

The bottom line is that the government is talking about “consulting” with the OS on making data available so there is plenty of wiggle room and space for manoeuvering by either side yet.

Whatever happens, it seems fairly clear that there is some way to go in finalising what data will be free to use, it also seems clear that this will not cover the Mastermap dataset.