Trading Funds report: final totals: economy +£179m, gov’t -15.4m
So here are the tallies, according to the Trading Funds report, of how making bulk data free would benefit the economy, and how much it would cost the government. (You can find the figures in Chapter 7 of the report.)
| Name | Product | Gross benefit (£m) | Net cost to government (£m) | Net gain (£m) | Ratio of return on investment (net gain/net cost) |
| Ordnance Survey | Large Scale Topo | 168 | 12 | 156 | 13 |
| DVLA | Anonymised Bulk & Mileage data | 4.3 | 0.582 | 3.7 | 6.36 |
| Companies House | Bulk Data and Image | 2.6 | 0.681 | 1.9 | 2.79 |
| Land Registry | Property Price, Polygon GIS | 2.3 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.09 |
| Met Office | wholesale data | 1.2 | 0.260 | 1.03 | 3.96 |
| UK Hydrographic Office | Digital UK Charts & Publications | 1.08 | 0.744 | 0.338 | 0.45 |
| Total | 179.48m | 15.37m | 164.2m | 10.68 | |
| source: models of PSI provision by Trading Funds report, DBERR | |||||
The figure for Ordnance Survey is dramatic, but understandable: as it says itself, it underpins huge amounts of economic activity. The point that this study makes is that making its raw data free would allow even more economic activity – creative, useful, beneficial, taxable – to occur.
(The UKHO is unlike the other trading funds, as the report points out, because it takes in raw data from outside organisations, which it may not be allowed to make available royalty- or payment-free. Which goes some way to explaining the answer to the question I was asked earlier.)
- The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
- Trading Funds report first glance: economists, start here (12 March 2008; score: 39.64%)
- Trading Funds report: is PSI the new electricity and roads? (14 March 2008; score: 35.71%)
- Ordnance Survey provides redacted version of its study into its financial organisation (24 June 2009; score: 33.92%)
- Trading Funds report will be released with the budget... and... (11 March 2008; score: 33.63%)
- Ignore the Budget - get the trading funds report (12 March 2008; score: 31.15%)
