The Government's open data strategy gained increased momentum this week as it was announced the public will have more access to Ordnance Survey maps from next year.
Making local and national government data freely available and accessible provides a number of social and economic benefits:
- Facilitates innovation and improvement in public services by putting
information, and therefore power, in the hands of the electorate and service
providers.
- Increases transparency and democratic accountability.
- Enables people to re-use the data in different and more imaginative ways
than may have originally been intended. (Estimates suggest that this could
generate as much as a billion pounds for the UK economy.)
- Makes people feel more connected to their community by giving them the tools to demand action on issues that matter. For example, releasing council records in re-usable form would mean that citizens can find everything from the council accounts to the number of streetlights and community wardens, to when the rubbish is collected and the hedges trimmed.
Communities Secretary, John Denham, says the open data policy is a key pillar of Government efforts to strengthen democracy:
"Public service reform must be open and transparent so the public can examine what is happening and propose alternative ways of doing things.
"This can only happen if the necessary information and data about what is currently delivered is easily and readily available. Ordnance Survey is a world renowned mapping expert and making the data they hold about local areas, like council boundaries and postcodes, readily available is an important first step to a more open government.
"We want people to be able to compare the outcomes and the costs for their own local services with the services delivered elsewhere, and suggest means of improving and driving change that help cut out duplication and waste, and make sure that every pound of public money is working as hard as it can."
Ordnance Survey data
The Ordnance Survey is Great Britain's national mapping agency and holds data relating to electoral and local authority boundaries, postcode areas and mid scale mapping information.
The open data proposals seek to harness Ordnance Survey's expertise in the production, maintenance and application of high-quality geospatial information.
For example, developers might use the information alongside other Government data about transport, health, education, or other services that generate economic and social value.
Under the proposals:
- Data relating to electoral and local authority boundaries as well as
postcode areas will be released for free re-use, including
commercially.
- Mid-scale digital mapping information will also be released in the same
way.
- But the highest-specification Ordnance Survey products and services - such as those used by property developers or utility companies - will be charged for on a "cost-reflective basis."
About 80% of public sector data mentions a place and the Government hopes opening up Ordinance Survey data will encourage more effective exploitation of public data by businesses, individuals and community organisations."
