26 Nov 2009
The government’s decision to publish Ordnance Survey mapping information in a free and re-usable form online is a major victory for democracy campaigners.
The move is likely to result in new and improved online services for citizens, as well as better government transparency, according to experts.
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Stephen Timms, who has ministerial responsibility for the wider initiative to put state information online, said at a Downing Street seminar last week: “There are big gains to be made here in accountability and improving the quality of public services.”
Publishing Ordnance Survey data was always a key marker for the government’s commitment to its open data agenda.
Tim Berners-Lee, who is overseeing the initiative, said, “Ordnance Survey data is special. An awful lot of data in a table makes no sense, whereas in a map form it does. It means you can compare things.”
Availability of Ordnance Survey data means developers can create maps that tell people which council is responsible for fixing a particular lamppost, where they can build public footpaths, and the location of their nearest polling station.
Map data can also be cross-referenced with crime, health and education data to help evaluate the effectiveness of public services – a key democratic tool.
For example, a school can be evaluated by the size and relative wealth of its catchment area as well as by its A-level results.
In addition, hospital A&E units could be judged by the amount of crime and traffic incidents in their area rather than by the length of waiting time.
“The first thing is getting the data out there,” said Berners-Lee. “But this move will become more and more about how we join it together.”
Even the act of getting the information published is a major victory for government transparency campaigners.
Since the Power of Information review was published in 2007, persuading public bodies to part with public data has been an uphill struggle. The Ordnance Survey in particular was unwilling to lose a major revenue stream, despite the fact that the information is paid for by taxpayers.
Sir Nigel Shadbolt, professor of Artificial Intelligence, who is helping Berners-Lee with the initiative, said: “This [release of data] is counterintuitive to many public bodies.”
Shadbolt and Berners-Lee hope to introduce measures that will encourage bodies to proactively release data. “Our rallying cry is ‘Not why but why not?’” said Shadbolt.
Developers point out that with open access to public data they can create alternatives to state-funded projects such as Directgov and the TfL web site more cheaply, saving the government millions.
This has already been shown by online services that take raw bus time data and turn it into a local service guide.
On top of this, the government now estimates that making information available for commercial re-use could benefit the economy by up to £1bn.
With all these facts to hand, Gordon Brown must have been asking himself, “Why not indeed?”
Computing was one of the few to pick up last week on the key thrust of the data liberation proposals, that of providing the "reference geographies" (postcodes, boundaries) alongside all the other 1,100+ data sets so that the latter could be aggregated, analysed and visualised in an accessible manner ? so good work on that.
This should be roundly applauded by all especially as it also is likely to eliminate "derived data" issues for these same data. It could indeed lead to a parallel developer-led world in which alternative and likely better online services emerge using these data sets for specific uses and agendas. All, again, a good thing.
However, while this represents a substantial amount of social value, the genuine economic value that, outside the voluntary sector, would be required to ensure the sustainability of this parallel world is less clear and assured, giving government little option other than to continue to run these things themselves or to contract third parties to do same (as they already do often to much cynicism). So sadly little genuine cost saving will occur.
Viable freemium type business models are relatively immature in this arena with ad revenues unable to fill even modest hyper-local type coffers adequately.
And, as Wikipedia, OSM and others would acknowledge, sustaining the long term interest, update, compliance and so on in such projects is a challenge in itself.
A few other points:
- it is anticipated, and indeed the language of the announcement supports this, that the data sets detailed by Computing, the "reference geographies" meet the vast majority of requirements in the public domain while at the same time having limited impact on both the data providers themselves (OS, Royal Mail et al) or those whose revenue comes from existing value adding services (a part of the economy and stakeholder community that has been overlooked by most commentators); this then begs the question as to the need or demand for, or economic and social benefit from, other geographic data sets ? certainly most users would see existing platforms such as Bing or Google as providing the most familiar interface for visualisation and communication of the aggregated data sets
- the economics of this type of data are under-studied and difficult; the £1bn figure comes from the following report http://www.dotecon.com/publications/CUPI-detriment.pdf which any serious reading of would at least raise some questions, not least of which is the relatively small contribution that Ordnance Survey makes; APPSI?s response on related re-use issue (http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/docs/consultations/replies/stakeholders/uk_advisory_panel_psi.pdf) illustrates difficulties and diversity of opinion in this arena while the study by Rufus Pollock (http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file45136.pdf) discussed detailed data and not that considered under the current initiative.
- the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) may seem an arcane statistical issue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modifiable_areal_unit_problem) and is naturally ignored by all kinds of analysts, politicos et al; however, it illustrates the risks associated with using arbitrary boundary data sets for data aggregation. It could be argued that this issue begs the question or utility of the "reference geographies" to be liberated especially when they are likely to be used as much for agenda setting as for social value purposes. For instance constituency boundaries are adjusted to reflect various types of demographic change, often obscuring what may be marked "vernacular" boundaries and diluting non-local understanding of socio-economic and other factors in a specific "geography" or environment. This is something that academics recognise and that Flickr/Yahoo with their WOEIDs are exploring innovatively. A range of more complex spatial and stats analysis tools exist that provide supplementary or alternative frameworks for this type of data modelling but are rarely deployed.
Invigorating times for the world of geography and mapping, which will see new community oriented services emerge supported by a variety of models.
Posted by: James 26 Nov 2009
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