- The Guardian, Thursday 7 February 2008
MPs have criticised Ordnance Survey for its lack of transparency on how much it spends on its "firmly commercial" activities, and the "complex and inflexible" licences which have left even the Ministry of Defence "uncertain about what use it may make of the data it buys" from OS.
The House of Commons select committee on Communities and Local Government, chaired by Phyllis Starkey, recommends that OS should revise its accounting procedures, to make clear how much it spends on activities done purely as part of its "quasi-governmental" function, and those done on a "firmly commercial" basis.
OS responded that it is too late in the current financial year to meet that request, but that it is "already acting on many of the points raised in the recommendations".
The Locus Association, which promotes private sector use of public sector information, called on the government to "hold OS to account over the committee's conclusions" while expressing disappointment that the report did not demand clearer boundaries for OS's "public task" - maintaining and updating the MasterMap of Great Britain - and its "commercial work", in which it licenses datasets, including the MasterMap and other data. Michael Nicholson, chairman of Locus, said this "will result in commercial activities being continually funded by those which are part of the OS's public task".
Evidence given to the committee reveals a broad unease with the status of OS. The mapping imagery company Getmapping.com charges that OS is "competing unfairly in the [mapping] imagery market" by cross-subsidising its commercial activities from the public obligation, with "no effective regulation".
The MoD, meanwhile, complained in its evidence about "more stringency and complexity" over the release of OS data. It also suggests splitting OS into two parts - one, government-funded, to maintain the national geographic database; the other to exploit the data, like commercial rivals.
The Free Our Data campaign thinks the MoD's idea is workable, but does the government have the courage to do it?
OS responded that it "supports the MoD's sharing of data derived from Ordnance Survey products, in order to meet MoD's statutory obligations".
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