Wikileaks produces OS confidential briefing to ministers
Well, well. Wikileaks, the organisation that has leaked details about Daniel Arap Moi’s finances and UBS’s dealings, has provided something altogether more interesting than the identity of the international man or woman of mystery.
It’s a confidential briefing document by Sir Rob Margetts, chair of Ordnance Survey, Vanessa Lawrence, chief exec of OS, and Charlie Villar (who Google tells us is a member of the Shareholder Executive) to “the minister” – hard to know who but since it talks about various options such as the OpenSpace concept, which was unveiled earlier this year, we assume the minister in question was Iain Wright – else this would hardly be confidential information, would it?
The document – a 22-page PDF – is available from
https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/New_Digital_Master_Map_for_Great_Britian:_Confidential_Advice_to_Ministers%2C_2009.
One very interesting page is p9, which seems to offer a comparison of the “current” trading fund model, the “utility” – is that “free data”? – model, and the “hybrid” model, though not much is made clear about what the hybrid model actually involves. Except that moving to it doesn’t involve any restructuring costs, which seems incredible.
Your opinions welcome: what does it mean? Can this report somehow be the source of Sir Rob’s mysterious “cost the government £500m to £1bn to shift to a free data model” claim? And does that claim – and this briefing – actually stand up to public scrutiny, rather than the minister’s private office?
You’re the public. What do you think?
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September 7th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
The PDF is a very interesting read and in some ways makes a lot of sense, only because it highlights the inadequacies of the existing models. A ‘One England & Wales’ Public Sector Agreement would cross the barriers placed on government bodies who are currently under either the Mapping Service Agreement (MSA) or the Pan Government Agreement (PGA). For instance, Police authorities come under the MSA, whilst the National Improvement Agency (NPIA) is part of the PGA. Theoretically – and confirmed by OS – if a national police system provided by the NPIA (firearms for instance) utilised some parts of AddressLayer2 for its gazetteer – which is part of the PGA – and then wanted to share that information with a police authority, they may not be licensed to do so as AL2 is not part of the MSA. It is a great example of how the current dual contract arrangement is simply to inflexible for today’s data sharing environment and potentially lethal when it comes to something as serious as firearm’s ownership.
I don’t really understand the hybrid model or why it is so different to a simplified single government agreement but I do wonder what impact this may have on the (R)MSA due to be implemented in April 2010. Is the 2 years+ hard work undertaken by the Local Government Information House (LGIH) & partners potentially now defunct? Do we really want another separate MSA whilst still trying to share spatial data & work with partners under the PGA?
Finally, to reiterate something the ACPO chair for GI (Andrew Watson) has stated on several occasions, as the Emergency Services we should be getting all this data for free anyway! Now there’s a nice, simple business model….
[My opinions and not my employer's]