Home Office responds re OS and crime maps
I asked the Home Office yesterday whether the home secretary Jacqui Smith was still standing by her pledge that all police forces would have crime mapping by the end of the year, in the light of the fact that OS claims that plotting any data on a Google (or Microsoft or Yahoo or Ask..) map which is “derived” from an OS map breaks its licence.
The Home Office reply in full:
“Crime mapping is being delivered through ACPO as part of the Policing Pledge. We have been aware of this issue for some time and have worked with ACPO to ensure that forces remain on track to publish crime maps as part of the Policing Pledge by the end of the year”.
I’m intrigued by that “aware… for some time” bit. Because it seems to me that time is running out to hit that target.
Looking, for example, at the site for the county where I live, Essex, the crime figures and statistics page shows a tiny map of the county, and then simply gives you a listing of crimes (if you can figure out where you live; good luck with that if you’re near a boundary, because the map can’t be expanded) in the wards.
To have a crime map by the end of the year will mean changing that all over to something plotted within, let’s be generous, 20-odd working days (unless the Essex coders are going to work over Christmas). Four working weeks.
I may be a pessimist, but unless there’s a radical change in how OS interprets its licensing – or in how OS data gets licensed – I don’t see that happening. The argument about licensing remains. And commenters have previously noted their frustration over the OS licence, which prevents them getting anything done.
Is there a list of the UK police forces, and can anyone find any others that have introduced crime mapping apart from the Met (illicitly), West Yorkshire and West Midlands?
- The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
- Ordnance Survey says Met Police crime maps break its licence. Does Jacqui Smith know? Or Gordon Brown? (19 November 2008; score: 55.75%)
- Interactive crime maps for everyone by Christmas, says Home Office (28 July 2008; score: 45.9%)
- Locus trade association responds to Free Our Data (4 April 2006; score: 42%)
- The police and crime mapping: and another perspective from the Observer (1 June 2008; score: 38.88%)
- Crime mapping for London, Boris? We'll start the clock now (5 May 2008; score: 38.38%)
November 21st, 2008 at 4:36 pm
A list (and links to) all of the police forces can be found here.
http://www.police.uk/forces.htm
I’ve checks the ones pertinent to me (Derbyshire and Northumberland) and there’s no crime mapping on their sites – however – Derbyshire does use Google Maps when you zoom into their “My Local Police” maps and this displays ward boundaries with the neighbourhood stations located on it.
November 21st, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Came here from the Guardian Technology story … one question that seems to need answering is “who ‘owns’ ward boundaries and other such data? If OS are NOT the clear owner of this data, then establish who is and then make OS *pay* for it (if they get or use it, or relicence it). If it is local authority data that is put on to a version of a local authority in-house licensed OS map and then later the same data is put on Google maps, there should be no problem. If, as seems to be the case, OS is saying that by putting the boundary etc data on to any OS maps, it inherits some magic OS IPR that causes it to be protected and not usable again outside OS, then the local authority faces the cost of entering their data on to Google maps “cleanly” – which no doubt costs them more – and causes the real issue. Solution? If I were Google maps I’d be considering a special UK local authority subsidy just to get the data legitimately and be able to say yah boo to OS and make lots of local authority friends into the bargain.
November 22nd, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Hampshire and IOW Police appear to have a licence to use OS maps in their crime mapping software:
http://www.hantsiowcaddie.gov.uk/caddie-2/portal
November 23rd, 2008 at 12:19 am
Looks like they might be planning to stick the OS up for sale!
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5213218.ece
November 24th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
George:
OS IPR rests on data being created *using* OS maps as the base, as local authorities etc all used OS maps (having no other option originally) all such data created thus now has OS IPR. Editing the data does not remove this so the ward boundaries etc would have to be recreated from scratch using another source to remove this IPR restriction.
The other option would presumably involve local authorities, police etc buying out the OS IPR in their datasets. It would be nice if OS would rwaive their IPR in datasets such as Ward Boundaries, where there is no way of recreating the base mapping from the data and they are clearly a public function.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:27 am
For most police authorities the challenges of getting crime statistics online by the end of the year are much broader than the question of whether their OS license restricts them from using the Google API. This will be a big project for them that may not have been budgeted it apparently cost the Met £200k for a relatively simple Google mashup.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
@steven one useful step forward is for the police to make accurate and definitive data feeds available and invite savvy coders to do the rest! :) IMHO many public bodies should make great datafeeds, not poor websites…
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Well, it seems nearly every force met its end of year target, however, most seem to have chosen a solution that is truly awful. The search function is poor, and it is far removed from “interactive mapping”. They have gone for a sort of marketing/web design solution, which is nothing like true web GIS; they basically have very poor maps, with dreadful polygon heatmapping and some pointless tabulated data sitting next to it. The real crime is that they have the audacity to call this “mapping”.