Open data in the United Kingdom

There have been campagins in the UK for its government to open up the large amounts of data it has for greater public usage without prohibitivly large fees.

Transport Direct

In June 2006 the Free our data campaign run by The Guardian said "In an age when it is not seen as appropriate for the public sector to run power stations or railways, why is it running nationalised industries in what should be the most dynamic sector of all, the web-based knowledge economy? The question lies at the heart of our campaign, which argues that government’s role should be to collect and administer high-quality raw data, but make it freely available to everyone to create innovative services". Transport Direct's chief executive, Nick Ilsley, said that research by the department prior to Transport Direct’s launch had showed the private sector wasn’t interested in providing a one-stop all-purpose site.

In April 2007, Cabinet Office Minister Hilary Armstrong commissioned Ed Mayo and MySociety director Tom Steinberg to draft a "Power of Information Review" on how the government could serve the public's information needs better. The resulting report led Cabinet Minister Tom Watson, MP to create a 'Power of Information Task Force.

In 2008 MySociety requested to OPSI that the dataset should be made available for re-use as Open Data rather than at a charge of £7,500.

In April 2008 Tom Watson MP, Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office said that pledged to turn upside down the British public's "recipient relationship" with official information.

The 'Power of Information Taskforce Report' was published by the Cabinet Office in February 2009. It reported that although the National Public Transport Data Repository, described itself as ‘Crown Copyright’ investigations showed this database is not actually government data and that the NPTDR charges significant fees for use. The report suggested that there should be a presumption in favour of information which has been created by public sector bodies being available for re-use. They also suggested that there should be a clear and consistent copyright and licensing rules applied making it easy to work with data from multiple sources in the public sector. They recommended a 'Crown Commons' style approach with "highly permissive licensing scheme that is transparent, easy to understand and easy to use, modeled on the 'Click Use' license".

Also in February 2009 Tom Watson MP from the Cabinet Office advised that the UK government would put Open-source software on equal footing for procurement; stating that "Procurement decisions will be made on the basis on the best value for money solution to the business requirement, taking account of total lifetime cost of ownership of the solution, including exit and transition costs, after ensuring that solutions fulfil minimum and essential capability, security, scalability, transferability, support and manageability requirements." and "Where there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products, open source will be selected on the basis of its additional inherent flexibility".

In August 2009 Tom Watson MP mused on his website under the title "Wacky terms and conditions" about why the DirectGov version of the transport direct portal included this condition: “you may retrieve and display Content from the Website on an electronic visual display device, print individual pages on paper (but not photocopy them)”.

In September 2009 Sir Tim Berners Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt who had been appointed by Gordon Brown to advise the Government on how to make data more accessible to the public were invited to Number 10 Downing Street to present their early findings to the cabinet.

In October 2009 Tom Watson MP questioned why railway timetables were the train operators' private intellectual property. He asked Junior transport minister Chris Mole: "Does not my hon. Friend think that the timetable data belong to the people, and that we should make them available for free?". He also proposed an Early Day Motion that read "That this House calls on the Government to ensure that transport timetables for rail and bus operators are made freely available for re-use, using an open standards format, thus enabling voluntary and commercial organisations to publish the data on their own digital platforms". It was signed by 32 MPs.

By November 2009 the Prime Minister announced that some Ordnance Survey data would be released as Open data.

In December 2009 Local Transport Today reported that 'Data release could spark transport IT innovations". The magazine reported that "Among the data to be made accessible through the site are trunk road traffic volumes, the National Public Transport Access Node (NaPTAN) database and the National Public Transport Data Repository (NPTDR)". A DfT spokeswoman was reported to say: “We will seek to embrace new technology to enable partners to provide exciting, user-focused services such as recently seen with satellite navigation and i-phone applications,”

In January 2010 a new government web-service, data.gov.uk was unveiled which would "offer reams of public sector data, ranging from traffic statistics to crime figures, for private or commercial use". The aim of the project was to "kickstart a new wave of services that find novel ways to make use of the information". The US had recently launched data.gov and London Mayor Boris Johnson had created the London Data Store the same month.

In March 2010 the Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the NaPTAN dataset was to be immediately made available from the data.gov.uk site as Open Data, as well as confirming an impending release of Ordnance Survey data. In his speech he observed that at present public transport timetables and real-time running information was owned by the operating companies but that the government would work to free it up. He also said that "from today we will make it a condition of future franchises that this data will be made freely available".

Also in March 2010 a Freedom of Information request was made to the Department for Transport inquiring about arrangements that had been made for the release of cycling data that was being collected for the portal at public expense. It requested information about any claims the Ordnance Survey would have over the data and if so the terms, and prices charged for making the data available to Ordnance Survey customers. Also the cost to a Local Authority for adding their area to the planner and for notes of any meetings of project boards and working parties. A response was published on 1 April 2010.

OS

Ordnance Survey has been subject to criticisms. Most criticism centres on the point that Ordnance Survey possesses a virtual government monopoly on geographic data in the UK, while, although a government agency, since 1999 it has been required to act as a Trading Fund or commercial entity. This means that it is supposed to be totally self-funding from the commercial sale of its data and derived products - whilst at the same time it is supposed to be the public supplier of geographical information. In 1985 the "Committee of Enquiry into the Handling of Geographic Information" was set up in to “advise the Secretary of State for the Environment within two years on the future handling of geographic information in the UK, taking account of modern developments in information technology and market needs”. The Committee's final report was published under the name of its chairman, Roger Chorley, in 1987. The report stressed the importance of widely available geographic information to the UK and recommended a loosening of government policies on distribution and cost recovery.

In March 2006 The Guardian newspaper's Technology section began a "Free Our Data" campaign, calling for the raw data gathered by Ordnance Survey (not to mention data gathered on its behalf by local authorities at public expense) to be made freely available for reuse by individuals and companies, as happens, for example, with such data in the USA. However, Ordnance Survey claims that the quality of the freely available government mapping in the USA is low or variable because of funding issues.

On the 7 April 2006 the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) received a complaint from the data management company Intelligent Addressing. Many, although not all, complaints were upheld by the OPSI, one of the conclusions being that Ordnance Survey "is offering licence terms which unnecessarily restrict competition". Negotiations between Ordnance Survey and interested parties are ongoing with regard to the issues raised by the OPSI report, Ordnance Survey being under no obligation to comply with the report's recommendations.

Since August 2007, Ordnance Survey has contracted the political lobbying company Mandate Communications to help campaign against the free data movement and discover which politicians and advisers continue to support their current policies.

In November 2009 the Prime Minister announced that "mid-scale" data from Ordnance Survey would be made available for free reuse, including commercial applications, from April 2010. A consultation was held inviting responses between 23 December and 17 March by the Department of Communities and Local Government.

OS OpenData

In response to the feedback from the consultation, the government announced that a package of Ordnance Survey data sets would be released for free use and re-use. On 1 April 2010 Ordnance Survey released the brand OS OpenData, under an attribution-only license compatible with CC-by. Various groups and individuals had campaigned for this release of data, but some were disappointed when the some of the profitable datasets were not included - withheld for the counter-argument that if licensees don't pay for OS data collection then the government would have to be willing to foot a £30m p.a. bill, to obtain the future economic benefit of sharing the highly detailed mapping produced by the UK's national agency.

The files have been cached on the MySociety website for convenient download.

Files include:

OS StreetView

Street-level map emphasising roads and their names and major buildings.

Meridian 2

Vector data of various 'themes'. Communication theme: roads and railways, boundaries, and coastline. Topographic theme: boundaries and coastline, developed land-use areas, cartographic names, hydrology, and woodlands.

VectorMap District

Mid-scale vector dataset designed to display information on the web (mid-scale customisable mapping)

Boundary Line

Vector data of local government administrative boundaries and electoral boundaries.

1:50 000 Scale Gazetteer

List of locations to 1km resolution, with coordinates and OS grid references. Includes airports, farms, hills, woodlands, commons, and over 42 000 towns and settlements.

MiniScale

Smallest scale data provided. Shows broad landscape features including boundaries, settlements, main communications, and physical features.

Code-Point Open

Provides location for central position of each postcode in Great Britain. Data contains postcodes, easting and northing coordinates, NHS codes, and administrative codes. In CSV format; updated every February, May, August, and November.

Strategi

Vector data to be used with the 1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster data for use at regional level. Layers include roads, railways, airports, ferries, water features, ceremonial boundaries, cities, towns and other settlements, woods and land use, and geographic names.

Land-Form PANORAMA

Vector data for physical ground shape: contours, coastlines, lakes etc.

1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster

Regional map, similar in resolution to a road atlas. Shows cities, towns, villages, motorways, A and B class roads, railways, rivers and some woodlands. With 1:250 000 scale gazetteer of relevant names and a digital legend.

OS Locator

Gazetteer of road names (without geometry of road). Contains coordinates defining a rectangle delimiting the extent of the road referenced.

Historical material

Ordnance Survey historical works are generally available, as the agency is covered by Crown Copyright: works more than fifty years old, including historic surveys of Britain and Ireland and much of the New Popular Edition, are in the public domain. However, finding suitable originals remains an issue as Ordnance Survey does not provide historical mapping on 'free' terms, instead marketing commercially 'enhanced' reproductions in partnership with Landmark. This can be contrasted with, for example, the approach in the Republic of Ireland in more recent times, where Ordnance Survey Ireland claims regular copyright over its mapping (and over digital copies of the public domain historical mapping).