Access to public geographic data is increasing, but not as fast as some would like. Ruth Keeling reports on a CSW online debate that explored the potential of – and the obstacles to – better use of government statistics.
Geographic information systems (GIS) not only hold exciting possibilities for the way government works, facilitating more transparent government and more engaged communities; they can also enable better public services. By allowing people to see what is happening in their neighbourhoods, they can reveal which services are being provided and which are needed in a locality. However, the path to this ideal is not straightforward, and there are some strong opinions to be found along the way, according to a recent online round-table debate held by Civil Service World and sponsored by GIS solutions provider ESRI UK.
Alongside the huge benefits of releasing more and more data, and allowing it to be localised, come associated risks. By and large, politicians and civil servants nowadays embrace the idea that the public should be able to access government data – with some exceptions, such as personal data – and now it is just a matter of smoothing out the technical issues. But a keen debate still rages over how public bodies that have traditionally generated income from data should proceed, and while the government has finally moved to release map data, postcode data is still expensive to access.
Although the UK government is working hard on this issue, Michael Jennings, a member of the government’s Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information (APPSI), noted that a recent Economist article on the subject judged the UK to be lagging behind countries such as the USA. And indeed, Martin O’Malley, governor of the US state of Maryland, contributed an ode to the huge potential of geographic data; while Keith Wishart, government strategist for ESRI UK, gave a number of American examples, including the oft-mentioned recovery.org, which shows where funding and grants are spent. “The question is, how do we make this work in the UK?” he asked.
Carol Tullo, director of information policy at the National Archives, was the first to mention perhaps the biggest sticking point in the geographic data world: the reluctance of data owners to release it for free. Map data owned by Ordnance Survey (OS) and postcode information owned by Royal Mail have been at the centre of the row over whether data should be released for free reuse, or if access to such information should be charged for. The problem, Tullo explained, is that “On the one hand, the centralised collection of good quality data requires resources, and costs need to be covered; on the other, giving free access allows users to experiment and play with data. That drives innovation and in turn feeds our information economy.”
The OS used to argue that good quality data has to be funded by licensing, but following behind-the-scenes work by the government’s data adviser Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the organisation announced last week that it would be opening up access to a much bigger collection of mapping data under its OS OpenData scheme.
Data must produce revenue to ensure continued quality, said Ray Boguslawski, data-sharing programme director at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. “Government needs to recognise the need to maintain quality in its data and consider where licensing and commercial considerations need to be included as part of the deal,” he insisted.
Others are firmly on the other side of the fence. Robert Barr, a former senior lecturer in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) who chaired the geographical reference working group for the government’s Social Exclusion Unit, said he had been “surprised and ashamed” when he discovered that the Planning Alerts website set up by enterprising members of the public proved to be better at notifying people about local planning applications than his local authority’s website. Unfortunately, he added, the site had to close because it could not afford the licence payments Royal Mail demanded for the use of the postcode data which allows the site to work.
Barr described the GridLink initiative between OS, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and Royal Mail – set up to rationalise the different postcode data the three hold – as “a cartel” which prevents access to “essential geo-referencing material”. Although OS has changed its tune, “Royal Mail, with the support of their minister, are dragging their feet” – the public company should never have been given ownership of the data, Barr argued. “Let’s see action now,” he insisted.
Civil servants from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), such as head of geography and GIS policy Andy Tait, explained that ONS had decided not to take any share of the royalties from GridLink, “in the spirit of providing free access to its data”. Graham Jenkinson, deputy director of the ONS’s statistical framework division, said that the release of statistics on maps was part of “our general strategy to release statistics free with no restrictions on their reuse as long as their source is acknowledged”. This would, he explained, help businesses and policymakers, drive innovation and feed the knowledge economy.
Chipping in from the British Geographical Survey (BGS), head of knowledge exchange Keith Westhead provided the possibility of a middle way: charge commercial customers, but give other users free access. BGS had released one of its “premier data sets” for free as part of its strategy to release information for use in teaching, research and innovation, he explained, “in order to balance and complement the healthy partnership we already have with the business community based on commercial licensing of our premium datasets”.
As well as rights, there are access issues in the form in which data is released, pointed out David Fry, a statistician from Communities and Local Government. Developers cannot do much with a ‘PDF’; they need the information in a form that can be grabbed by the computer programs that they are using to process the data.
Fry also highlighted the fact that there is “too little reuse, too much duplication of information” in government. This lack of coherence over what data is available means that project managers can spend up to half of their time finding and assessing the quality of spatial data, according to Defra strategy and evidence director Mike Sega. Work on solving this exact problem is now being carried out by the UK Location Programme, he explained.
However, even while some difficulties of ownership, accessibility and duplication remain unresolved, geographic data in the UK has already had a huge impact. Take a look at data.gov.uk, where the government has released thousands of data sets, and you find a multitude of applications designed to increase the accessibility and transparency of government and to make it easier for people to become more engaged with their communities; some also have the potential to add wealth through the further development of the knowledge economy. To name a few, there are apps to find the best care home; to work out what your taxes were spent on; a quiz which compares perceptions of crime against the real statistics; and an ‘ASBOrometer’ indicating levels of anti-social behaviour across the UK.
As well as these public-facing gadgets, geographic data is being used to improve the way government works behind the scenes. Contributors to the debate revealed that the Department for Work and Pensions – which has offices across the country – is matching spatial employee data, such as office staff surveys and absence levels, with local customer satisfaction information; Institute for Government chief executive Michael Bichard explained the use of geographic data in identifying service links and overlaps in services coordination pilot Total Place; and the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) uses geographic data in its Property Information Mapping Service (e-pims) project, and wants to see it used in workforce planning. The latter could match surplus workforces in one department with gaps in another, said Peter Groves, OGC commercial delivery manager.
Although there are still problems in the use of geographic data, the online debate shows there is plenty of work going on regardless. As Carol Tullo concluded, what is already out there “will not be a perfect solution for all, no doubt, but as with this blog, it will have the advantage of airing and linking location data to a wider audience”.