Things are starting to happen, through the work of the Power of Information taskforce.

Here’s the latest: the terms of reference for the study demanded by the POI report reviewing the trading fund model have just been published.

The study will be jointly led by Treasury and DBERR; Yvette Cooper and Baroness (Shriti) Vadera are the lead ministers, though the Cabinet Office POI taskforce secretariat will work closely with them. (We’re still waiting on the timescale.)

From the POI Taskforce blog:

the Taskforce will be assisting with this review, particularly looking at the value of the data held by the funds and whether the current business models and licencing arrangements are sustainable.

If you had to set our priorities what areas would you have us look at? Is there any research we should be looking at? Please kick off the discussion in the comments.

From the TORs themselves, part of the detailed work will include

With regards to a priority group of TFs (Ordnance Survey, Met Office, UK Hydrographic Office, Companies House, DVLA, and Land Registry) the exercise will aim to produce a detailed and definitive pricing and access policy for information held/created by TFs and the optimal constitutional structure for the several TFs to maximise benefit to the UK economy whilst maintaining public policy objectives.

Plus:

changes in the pricing policy and licensing regime around information held by TFs may impact on their trading performance and value. Therefore for those TFs affected, the assessment will

• provide an assessment of the business model or constitutional reforms needed to meet the Government’s commitment on access to information collected for public purposes by downstream markets; and
• provide an assessment of the options for pricing the release of this information

We think this is going to be fun.

The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
• Terms of reference for government study into Trading Funds: read (and/or download) them here (15 October 2007; score: 33.16%)
• Power of Information authors rebuff Ordnance Survey over "free maps" article (9 October 2007; score: 32.07%)
• Ignore the Budget - get the trading funds report (12 March 2008; score: 31.72%)
• Power of Information blog suggests what should be freed up; Geographic Strategy seems to agree (28 November 2008; score: 31.16%)
• Government seeks input on flooding review: got an opinion? (5 September 2007; score: 30.91%)