In The Guardian: a year of Free Our Data campaigning: why is the Office for National Statistics free?
And what have we got? You might ask. Plenty of interesting points that there wasn’t enough room to fit in print, in fact (we didn’t get into the matters of other countries which don’t charge for their mapping).
Among a list of “interesting things we’ve learnt in the past year” in A few victories, but the battle goes on in today’s Guardian is one that has been intriguing me ever since the NCeSS event last week.
It’s this: the ONS makes its data available for free. The Ordnance Survey doesn’t. But they’re both dealing with data that are constantly changing.
As the story puts it:
- Despite being in effect half taxpayer-funded, OS’s position as a trading fund protects it from financial neglect by the Treasury, according to advocates of the model. They argue that OS has to collect data about a constantly changing landscape, and that making it fully taxpayer-funded would put it at the mercy of central funding, which could wane (as happened between the two world wars).
- The Office for National Statistics, which collects data about constantly changing social elements such as internet use, labour, manufacturing output and so on, is not a trading fund, and makes the majority of its statistics – including demographic data from the 2001 Census – available for free via its website.
So here’s the question: why isn’t ONS a trading fund, if it’s such an effective model?
- The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
- Is the new Statistics Board the right model for free data? (18 January 2007; score: 49.66%)
- Late, but anyway: New Zealand makes (some) statistics free - but why? (27 July 2007; score: 36.67%)
- In the Guardian: how rows over intellectual property are causing problems for the 2011 census (6 June 2008; score: 28.08%)
- Free Our Data: sessions this Thursday and Saturday, in Manchester and London (14 March 2007; score: 25.07%)
- New Zealand makes statistics data free to encourage business - but where's the logic? (15 June 2007; score: 24.64%)
March 22nd, 2007 at 9:08 am
Also ONS geography is a major piece of the statistical snapshot. Therefore, the data which ONS purchases must be licensed via Ordnance Survey via the usual inexplicable licensing scheme. What we can probably assume is that the purchase price is very high. Curiouser and curiouser.
April 29th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
And will the Government response be -ooh we could be charging for that too ?
Actually ONS has a nasty habit of giving (or selling) our 100 year+ Census data onto private companies to resell back to us.
Ironically, there was an announcment this week that even some slave records are now licensed to go on-line this way, so that descendants will have to pay to access the public records.
As a national resource, free to access if you can get to Kew, I think they have completely missed the point of their national remit, and the potential for the Internet providing public data for free to the public.
April 29th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
@Andy – the question of the census data is a really intereting one. It’s very tricky: should National Archives do the conversion of the old paper-based data, paying itself, or get someone outside to do it and find a different model for charging?
The National Archive method gives some commercial companies a head start during which they can charge, but if I understand it correctly, it then becomes public, free. Sounds good to me (if I’ve got it right).
November 14th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
[...] He makes a good point, but then, the Office of National Statistics faces much the same problem. Somehow that can be relied on to be independent… [...]