http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack-context/

“”"What has this got to do with CRU? The data that CRU needs for their data base comes from entities that restrict access to much of their data. And even better, since the UK has submitted an exception for additional data, some nations that otherwise would provide data without question will not provide data to the UK. I know this from experience, since my nation (Iceland) did send in such conditions and for years I had problem getting certain data from the US.”"”

Given the leaked emails cited by Monbiot:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/11/23/the-knights-carbonic/
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=914&filename=1219239172.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=490&filename=1107454306.txt

It looks more like an after the fact made-up excuse for bad behviour of some CRU people to me but it of course becomes interesting for freeourdata to get involved, isn’t it?

And for the well thought out big picture please read Judy Curry here:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7826

Is there a forum or group that is discussing these opportunities ?

(We provide solutions and services to local government to help their planning processes and citizen engagement)

Of course he was talking from the perspective of an industry expect and not a lawyer, so we must await the promised new framework on derived data which was to be published in October.

So for instance, say a new bus stop is created on Mercator Street, about 20 yards along from its junction with Peters Road. I load up our corporate GIS, use the OS Streetview layer to find the Mercator St/Peter Rd junction, then drop a marker onto my “bus stops” layer in the appropriate place. Because I used that OS map to work out where the “appropriate place” was, my bus stops layer is now OS-derived data and I can’t just give that data away to be used without restriction.

Of course if I’d made a trip out to Mercator Street armed with a GPS unit and taken my own location reading, I’d be safe. But that’s not how most local authority geodata layers are created.

It seems like a crazy system tax payers pay for governement employees to create it and then to access it we have to pay again

I haven’t used Google Maps (in a web development way) but it seems very embedded and accesses Google from users’ browsers. I’ve always preferred to do things more server (my server) side, but that doesn’t seem so possible with Google Maps. Is it going to be possible with what we’re going to have access to from OS?

Is there a chance that OS is going to be awkward, like they have already, and if they’re heart’s not in providing a genuinely useful service, then they can probably get in the way a bit. Is that a likely/possible thing?

If I’ve understood you correctly, data collection and digitisation of OS is already mainly done by contractors – Kampsax and BlomAerofilms have been doing so over the last 10 years.

Adrian

“PSI data must pass a ‘genuine government monopoly’ test before it is made available free as PSI.”

The monopoloy and competition issues are important, but it is not the main basis of the argument for making access to PSI free. The main basis is that PSI creation or collection is by and large funded directly or indirectly by the state from revenue generated through general taxation. Therefore those paying for it i.e., us taxpayers, should get access to it without having to pay for it again.

Since the released PSI will be available for commercial reuse, the businesses that produce mapping in competition with the OS as it is now, will be able to reap the benefits of free OS data like everyone else. They will be able to incorporate it into their own products and add value if they wish. The difference is that instead of them having few competitors, there will be potentially thousands, so profit margins will be forced down by the existing mapping business having to be more competitive. Then again, their costs will be lower or even nil.

I agree that data collection businesses like Intermap, may have to rethink their business plans, but Intermap also collects data for the US where federal mapping and GI is freely available and has been for many years. So if they can do it there they can here, without being greatly affected. Many if not most organisations and individuals cannot afford a license to geographic data collected by the private sector in the same way they cannot afford a license for that collected by the OS. Therefore arguments that they will see a reduction in customers in response to a freeing of OS data are largely unfounded. These private sector businesses will more likely see a reduction in their potential customer base, not their actual numbers of customers. They will need to, if they have not already, differentiate themselves and their products from freed PSI. This might be by providing higher accuracy, or higher resolution, or specialised products.

“But if OS maps are made freely available then the taxpayer will have to fund the aerial photography collection and the height data height data collection, because no private sector company will be able to compete.”

The taxpayer does this now, that is the whole point. However, I agree the business models of the data collection businesses may have to change. Perhaps, to being ones based on collecting data paid for the state, but which is then owned by the state. They, then in turn charge the state a fair price for performing the service. In essence they become contractors, just like construction companies charge the state for building a new road, but dont actually own the road they build. Private sector businesses that might be collecting data similar to the to-be released PSI, are only able to charge now for data they collect, because firstly an artificially maintained market was earlier created by the creation of trading funds and secondly, because they have to be sure of making a profit from their large investment, when most customers only require a small subset of the entire dataset collected.

PSI data must pass a ‘genuine government monopoly’ test before it is made available free as PSI. Otherwise the government can grow the power of the state by making the taxpayer fund the creation of data which would otherwise be created by the private sector in a normal competitive market.

Mapping is a good example;

The smallest components of map data which are genuine government monopolies should absolutely be made available free of charge as PSI. This includes things like electoral boundaries, sites of scientific interest, names of roads, postcodes etc.

But maps are already value added products which depend on other non-government data such as aerial photography, height data, coastlines, natural features etc. over which the government has no natural monoploy.

The mapping market is now subject to vigorous competition from private sector companies such as Bartholemews, NavTeq, the GeoInformation Group (UKMaps), Intermap (NEXTMap Britain) and Getmapping (The People’s Map). This competition has generated innovation (eg Getmapping created the first national aerial photography coverage and OS had to follow suit; Intermap created a better height model and forced OS to follow suit; NavTeq and TeleAtlas created driver restriction information, and forced OS to follow with the Integrated Transport Layer).

Provided that the genuine government monopoly data is made freely available as PSI then the private sector mapping market will thrive and customers will benefit from the competition. But if OS maps are made freely available then the taxpayer will have to fund the aerial photography collection and the height data height data collection, because no private sector company will be able to compete. This would be nationalisation by another name and would result in the growth of the state and reduction of competition and choice.

Instead, to be useful to industry, industry needs PSI to be published in established and storage-efficient industry standard formats compatible with industry standard software (no properietry formats like GeoPDF). The size and nature of some of these information sets would make publication in in formats created for internet publication, would be ridiculous and unacceptable. So for example in the case of PSI with a geographical component to it, that can be though of as vector drawing objects (points, areas and lines) it should be published as ESRI Shapefiles (geographical coordinates + attribute data) + metadata on the projection parameters for the data, not bloated, inefficient GML or XML files full of empty space.

All that is required for PSI publication are FTP sites from where the raw data in industry standard formats can be efficiently downloaded and having front ends describing the nature of the information howe it was collected or created, by whom and when etc. Nothing more elaborate is needed. For mapping what is definitely not required, nor acceptable, is am internet map server, simply delivering tiled images of maps.

An image of a table in a PDF is something else again.

Adrian