From todays Pre-Budget report, a document that’s main focus is the fiscal stimulation of the UK economy, this nugget of potentially very exciting news…
“4.54 Re-use of public sector information from trading funds
The HM Treasury/Shareholder Executive assessment of trading funds has considered the potential for innovation and growth from increasing commercial and other use of public sector information. It will shortly publish some key principles for the re-use of this information, consider how these currently apply in each of the trading funds and how they might apply in the future, and the role of the Office of Public Sector Information in ensuring that Government policy is fully reflected in practice.
For the Ordnance Survey, this will involve consideration of its underlying business model. Further details will be announced in Budget 2009.”
In politics, timing is everything..
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
4 replies on “A change of direction for the OS ?”
This is one of the more interesting reactions: http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=266
Hi Justin,
This is not about privatisation- this is about how the OS trades.. how it charges for data, and its relationship with other departments. This has been on the cards for a while, although I think the issue with derived data no doubt moved this up the agenda a bit !
The privatisation stories from yesterday seem to be just speculation.
ed
This sounds like the pressure from the Show us a Better Way competition winners, and the requirement for online crime mapping, are starting to have an effect. Plus, of course, the many small online mapping applications that are springing up to benefit UK people (mainly thanks to Google’s excellent Maps API) such as http://www.fillthathole.org.uk 🙂
If this means that the budget will remove some of the licence restrictions on geospatial information in the UK then it must be Good News for everyone.
Hi Ed,
It does all seems to be coming to a head… but I believe that the statement in the PBR is just a restatement of what was in the original terms of reference for the trading fund review (http://www.shareholderexecutive.gov.uk/publications/pdf/tradingfunds250608terms.pdf).
I was anticipating something in the PBR itself…but I’m hoping that the delay is due to a recognition that the policy makers needs to get this one right.