Category: Ordnance Survey

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Ordnance Survey Thoughts

Now why was that so difficult ?

Yesterday the Prime Minister announced that many of the data products produced by Ordnance Survey are too be made “open data” free for download and use by both indivuduals and commerical organsiations in the UK.

Our data has been freed ?

Well of course we will still have to see the details but this is a massive step forward and huge kudos needs to be paid to all those who have worked behind the scenes lobbying for this change and of course those who have been much more visible in their campaign. Congratulations Charles !!

The impact of Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt is raising the value of free data on the political agenda was also clearly important and perhaps was the final push in the finally balanced arguments between the treasury and cabinet office.

Is the world about to end now in Southampton?

Of course not, many myself included have often made the point that there are in actual fact two data businesses at the OS. The one which produces large scale detailed and up to date data for use by government and customers in the utility sectors and  the other which produces the rest and which actually accounts of a relatively small proportion of the revenues of the OS.

It is this second business that is impacted here, the people who continue to license OS Mastermap and Address Layer will not be impacted by this move, and the OS will not see a massive fall in revenue as a result.

On the other hand at least some of the following datasets should be made available for free, and we can expect to see many new products and services appear as a result..

  • Boundary-Line™
  • Code-Point®
  • Code-Point®  with polygons
  • Land-Form PROFILE®
  • Land-Form PROFILE® Plus
  • Land-Form PANORAMA®
  • Meridian™ 2
  • OS VectorMap™ Local

Make no mistake this is something that has been forced on the OS by Government, the OS did not appear to be represented at the announcement yesterday and there is only a terse statement on the OS website reflecting this change in direction.

This is a shame, the leadership of the OS could have been more proactive in realising the value of their information came from its wider distribution not from following a business model based on its scarcity.

Written and submitted from Pan Pacific Hotel, Singapore (01.293N, 103.859W)

Categories
Data Policy Ordnance Survey

DataSF : A example for UK Local Authorities to follow ?

While UK Local Authorities still struggle to provide public access to their geospatial data because of the bizarre OS rules on derived data, the residents of San Francisco have much rich data at their disposal.

Following on from the federal data.gov portal launched earier this year, DataSF – DataSF is a local version providing access to government data sets for download in common files formats.

datasfmini

This really is not something difficult to do, and allows both citizens potential entrepreneurs access to information their taxes have funded the collection and development of in the first place.

From an industry insider point of view this approach is of note also because rather than building a complex metedata driven portal, a simple download site has been built quickly with the focus on making information accessible.

It would be great to see some UK local Authorities follow this example, but I fear there is a small snag..

Who owns the data ?

Written and submitted from the Google Office, London

Categories
LBS Ordnance Survey Thoughts

iPhone OS 3.0 loves location.

As Brady from O’Reilly pointed out early this week, the new iPhone 3.0 software and new iPhone 3G S have some major improvements that will further accelerate the development of exciting new location aware applications.

The iPhone now joins the two Android powered HTC phones in having a high quality networked assisted GPS, a digital compass and of course ubiquitous network access, the necessary building blocks for a phone to access information based on its location.

Accuterra Mobile
Accuterra Mobile

We can expect to see more applications that use these capabilities to present information is truly innovative ways like wikitude and sky map, and of course applications which put the phones location core to their functionality, the ZipCar app demoed at WWDC is a great example of this, and you can imagine a range of security or e-commerce application which may be enabled by location in this way.

Imagine your credit card transaction verified in part by the fact you are in the same location as the vendor..

At the same time more traditional mapping users are served by applications like
AccuTerra Mobile which although one of many trail tracking applications aimed a walkers, is generating a buzz because of its high quality topographic mapping data.

This is an obvious market that in the UK we could expect to see an Ordnance Survey partner develop a similar application, indeed it will be a test of the new innovation friendly strategy of the OS to see if a similar application is developed in the UK.

After many false dawns Location based applications are really now with us, and so very accessible, with the new Mapkit framework in iPhone OS 3.0 and similar functionality on Android developing simple mapping based apps has never been more straightforward and crucially with integrated  Application Stores easy to reach potential customers.

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