Controversy has rumbled for years over whether the interests of UK plc are better served by OS charging a commercial price for its maps or making its mapping data freely available for others to exploit.
“Good maps and location intelligence play an important role in all our lives from plotting potholes in the road to how we act in a national emergency,” said housing minister Iain Wright, announcing the new strategy.
Reforming OS’s licensing framework to ease use of its data and services in other applications has been mooted, as has supporting the sharing of information across the public sector to improve policy and services.
The Office of Public Sector Information will review progress on the new OS business model in consultation with the Office of Fair Trading and report back in October and April.
As a government trading fund, OS is a self-funding body. An assessment of these funds by the government’s Shareholder Executive has already concluded that OS data is more likely to be maintained at high-quality levels under a commercial, revenue-funded model than through direct funding from taxation.
The AGI, which represents the interests of the UK’s geographic information industry, has invited comments for a formal response to the strategy.
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