Categories
Data Policy GIS

UKHO privatisation – where is the value ?

The Free Our Data campaign this week asks “Will the government try to privatise the UK Hydrographic Office?” – Such a development I believe has been on the cards for some time and is a result to some extent of the continuing lack of focus or understanding of information as an asset.

You get the impression that the management of information is seen by government purely as a cost to endure rather than the potential benefit it would be, if government information was better managed and shared across .gov.uk.

In saying that, UKHO is actually more an aggregator of information rather than a producer, its value as an organisation comes from the systems and processes to carry out the complex task of rapidly bringing together global datasets produced by 100’s of other marine data collectors – quite a specialised field.

If this niche is seen as valuable enough to consider privatisation, then how much more interest can the treasury have in the other agencies which create information and therefore sit on more valuable assets ?

Written and submitted from the Apple Store, London, using its free 802.11 network.

Categories
Apple

Apple Store Kingston opens Saturday…

The long awaited Apple Store in the Bentall Centre Kingston, opens this Saturday. I happened to be in New York in 2002 for the opening of the first Apple Store in SOHO, and now I will be able to walk to an Apple Store – that’s progress !

Apple Store SOHO

And yes it is Steve Jobs making a call outside the store on his mobile.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
GPS LBS

Maybe this year..

I have very happy memories of attending 3GSM in 2001 in Cannes with the newly formed Autodesk Location Services, this year 3GSM is a much bigger show, but very few of us in the suite at the Carlton Hotel in 2001 would have thought that in 2007 we would still be waiting for Location Based Services to take off.

3GSM LogoThere have been as we all know issues with the usability of applications, reliability of mobile networks and poor data rates and the problem I have often commented upon the “walled garden” mentality of the mobile operators.

This year at 3GSM we are seeing the handset manufactures beginning to side-step the networks with Nokia’s announcement of the their recently acquired Smart2go mapping software as a free download as well as a major component of the new GPS equipped N95, and RIM”s new Blackberry 8800 again with GPS and its own mapping application.

The networks are not out of the picture quite yet, I’m interested to seen what the Vodafone/Google Maps agreement actually looks like, but whatever else happens it does finally seem that there is a momentum building behind mobile mapping applications, not LBS yet, but progress at last.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.