Ordnance Survey responded today to our FOI request. The redacted financial study is expected later today, but first here are the organisations that it talked to in deciding whose model to adopt. Or not adopt.

Here’s the text of the FOI response.

The report about which these question were raised, was commissioned by the then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Iain Wright MP, and formed part of an input to the Trading Funds Assessment undertaken by the Shareholder Executive and HM Treasury.

1. Who or what was the “outside help”?

With regard to the International Comparison of Geographical Information Trading Models Study, outside help was provided by senior officials of those Institutions contacted.

In the case of the United States of America, as senior officials of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) were unavailable, Mr. David Cowen, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina, kindly provided us with an in-depth overview of the state of public sector GI data in the United States, including USGS. Mr Cowan is a former chair of the Mapping Science Committee of the United States National Research Council and is chair of the National Research Council’s Committee for the study of Land Parcel Databases.

The document was also reviewed by an internationally recognised expert in Geographical Information and National Mapping who agreed with the analysis and conclusions.

2. Which “equivalent organisations” were examined for the study?

There are no wholly equivalent organisations to Ordnance Survey, given its range of scales of mapping and other activities. Hence a representative sample of eight National Mapping Agencies or their closest equivalents were examined during the study. The sample included organisations with a wide range of data pricing policies: free, partial cost recovery (recovery of data dissemination costs), total cost recovery (recovery of data collection plus dissemination costs) and market price (cost recovery plus trading margin).

The overseas examples studied were:

Australia	PSMA (Public Sector Mapping Agencies)
Canada	Natural Resources Canada
France:	IGN (Institut Geographique National)
Netherlands	Kadaster
Norway	Statens Kartverk
New Zealand	LINZ (Land Information New Zealand)
Sweden	Landmäteriet
United States	USGS (United States Geological Survey) – via Mr David Cowan.

3. Which agencies did OS examine for the study?

IGN, Kadaster, Statens Kartverk and Landmäteriet have Agency status within their respective Governments.

4. Which agencies did the “outside help” examine for the study?

As indicated above, the outside help for the International Comparisons Study was provided by senior officials from the National Mapping Agencies examined in the Study, together with Mr Cowan and the internationally recognised expert.

And finally…

Please note that your enquiry has been processed to Freedom of Information guidelines. To the extent that the public interest (section 17) applies, we have determined that in all the circumstances of the case, the public interest has been met with the full provision of all information in this instance.

Update: Steven Feldman, who has been consulting for OS on how to get wider adoption of its OpenSpace API on its GeoVation initiative. Quoth Feldman (in the comments below): “We expect to go public on what we have planned for GeoVation in the next couple of weeks, watch my blog or mail me if you want to get a mail from me when we kick off.” (We apologise for the earlier error.)

, says he is not the “internationally recognised expert” mentioned by OS. We were going to ask but he beat us to it. The search goes on…

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• "OS replies" article - updated to two columns (24 April 2006; score: 30.3%)
• Minister confirms government response to OFT on PSI by end of June (14 June 2007; score: 28.59%)
• The "Jersey question": what if the profits of free data move offshore? (3 November 2008; score: 26.33%)
• Advance notice: Mike Cross talking to BCS on April 2 in London (19 March 2008; score: 22.6%)