http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/long-article-about-free-the-data-guardian-UK-tp337p338.html
> Give us back our crown jewels
>
> Our taxes fund the collection of public data - yet we pay again to
> access it. Make the data freely available to stimulate innovation,
> argue Charles Arthur and Michael Cross
>
> Thursday March 9, 2006
> The Guardian
>
> Imagine you had bought this newspaper for a friend. Imagine you asked
> them to tell you what's in the TV listings - and they demanded cash
> before they would tell you. Outrageous? Certainly. Yet that is what a
> number of government agencies are doing with the data that we, as
> taxpayers, pay to have collected on our behalf. You have to pay to get
> a useful version of that data. Think of Ordnance Survey's (OS) mapping
> data: useful to any business that wanted to provide a service in the
> UK, yet out of reach of startup companies without deep pockets.
>
> This situation prevails across a number of government agencies. Its
> effects are all bad. It stifles innovation, enterprise and the
> creativity that should be the lifeblood of new business. And that is
> why Guardian Technology today launches a campaign - Free Our Data. The
> aim is simple: to persuade the government to abandon copyright on
> essential national data, making it freely available to anyone, while
> keeping the crucial task of collecting that data in the hands of
> taxpayer-funded agencies.
>
> One government makes the data it collects available free to all: the
> United States. It is no accident that it is also the country that has
> seen the rise of multiple mapping services (such as Google Maps,
> Microsoft's MapPoint and Yahoo Maps) and other services - "mashups" -
> that mesh government-generated data with information created by the
> companies. The US takes the attitude that data collected using
> taxpayers' money should be provided to taxpayers free. And a detailed
> study shows that the UK's closed attitude to its data means we lose
> out on commercial opportunities, and even hold back scientific
> research in fields such as climate change.
>
> Who are the culprits? Besides OS, with its vast and valuable map data,
> there are the UK Hydrographic Office (which collects tidal and naval
> navigational data), the Highways Agency (which collects traffic data)
> and even the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting.
>
> Britain's public sector information is held by some 400 government
> departments, agencies and local authorities. Assets range from wills
> dating back to 1858, house values recorded in the Land Registry, maps
> and the risk of flooding to individual homes. Much is of great
> commercial interest, especially when it can be presented on innovative
> websites such as upmystreet.com. These sets of data are the modern
> crown jewels - but instead of treating them as a resource to boost
> national wealth, the government locks them up, restricting access to
> those who pay.
>
> The heart of our argument is twofold. First, the government should not
> run businesses. The civil service is too inflexible to cope with the
> speed of change in the commercial sector. If a company like Microsoft
> finds it difficult to adjust to a world of online applications, how
> much harder is it for a government department rooted in paper-based
> processes?
>
> Second, the government should be charged with collecting the best
> data. The Office for National Statistics labours to collect the most
> accurate depiction of Britain's society and economy. No private
> organisation has the resources, time or breadth of approach. By
> contrast, commercial companies ignore less profitable sectors: we
> can't trust data collected by banks about spending habits because they
> ignore people who cannot afford to open accounts. Similarly, few
> companies make detailed maps of Britain; they concentrate on the areas
> with the best returns.
>
> In a seminal piece of research into the real cost of charging for
> access to public data, the late Peter Weiss, of the US National
> Weather Service, compared open and closed economic models for public
> sector data. His paper, Borders in Cyberspace: Conflicting Public
> Sector Information Policies and their Economic Impact, is online
> (
http://tinyurl.com/cby55). He quoted a 2000 study for the European
> Commission carried out by Pira International, which noted that "the
> concept of commercial companies being able to acquire, at very low
> cost, quantities of public sector information and resell it for a
> variety of unregulated purposes to make a profit is one that
> policymakers in the EU find uncomfortable." But why?
>
> Pira pointed out that the US's approach brings enormous economic
> benefits. The US and EU are comparable in size and population; but
> while the EU spent €9.5bn (£6.51bn) on gathering public sector data,
> and collected €68bn selling and licensing it, the US spent €19bn -
> twice as much - and realised €750bn - over 10 times more. Weiss
> pointed out: "Governments realise two kinds of financial gain when
> they drop charges: higher indirect tax revenue from higher sales of
> the products that incorporate the ... information; and higher income
> tax revenue and lower social welfare payments from net gains in
> employment."
>
> Infinite applications
>
> The applications for public sector data are infinite, but here are two
> real-world ones that affect ordinary businesses. Many of Britain's
> best rock-climbing venues are on sea cliffs, and hence affected by the
> tides. For climbers planning a trip - and surely spending money in
> local shops - it helps to know if the tides will be favourable. But
> websites that try to offer British tide data have been told by the UK
> Hydrographic Office they must pay for it - a cost most are unwilling
> to endure. So sites have no tides, climbers make the safer choice, and
> shops miss out.
>
> Take traffic data. The Highways Agency has set up an exclusive deal
> with TrafficTV to send video details from motorway cameras to your
> mobile. But if the data were free, any company could offer
> well-organised maps and drive down the price while increasing the
> numbers who would have better access to traffic data. That would
> reduce congestion and pollution.
>
> How did we get into this mess? The problem stems from the days of the
> Conservative government, which created "trading funds". These
> government-owned bodies - including OS, Companies House, the Driving
> Standards Agency, HM Land Registry, the Patent Office and the Royal
> Mint - have to sell to other parts of the government and private
> customers. Every year they have a "revenue target" that must be paid
> to the Treasury; but the only way to earn those revenues is through
> commercial activity - creating the ludicrous spectacle of
> government-approved monopolies making the market buy data at their
> rates. A growing number of experts say the loss to the economy
> outweighs "gains" through lowered taxes. "The amount of money made is
> trivial," says Keith Dugmore of the Demographics User Group, which
> represents commercial users of government information.
>
> But the stifling of competition is most serious. Sometimes, the
> conflicts are surreal. The supply of postal addresses is an example.
> Three publicly owned agencies - the Post Office, OS and a consortium
> of local authorities - run lists of addresses. Because they are forced
> to put a "value" on the lists, they have been unable to agree a way of
> creating a single database. The cost of licensing addresses was one
> reason why returns from the 2001 census were so poor from several
> fast-changing metropolitan areas, such as Manchester.
>
> A local authority such as Swindon has to pay OS £38,000 a year to use
> its addresses and geographical data. It also has to pay the Royal Mail
> £3,000 for every website that includes the facility for people to look
> up their postcodes. Yet it was local authorities, which have a
> statutory duty to collect street addresses, that collected much of
> this data.
>
> Intense conflict
>
> Kristin Woodland, who chairs the local authorities' street gazetteer
> group, says: "The taxpayer pays for us to create the data, then has to
> pay us to use the data."
>
> The conflict between a trading fund's traditional role and its new
> commercial activities is most intense in mapping. "Technology has left
> the licensing model far behind," says Dugmore.
>
> Particular controversy surrounds the role of OS, founded to prepare
> the British army for a French invasion and now a household name that
> sees itself at the forefront of geographical information systems.
>
> OS has a monopoly on centuries' worth of data thanks to taxpayer
> funding. Without that head start, it would be in the same position as
> any other startup today: facing the choice of creating a brand-new
> dataset, or finding someone who had collected it and licensing it from
> them.
>
> Part of the problem is that government - and the Treasury - is blinded
> by its internal commercial targets, and unable to see the damage its
> policies do. Thus within government, OS is widely seen as an example
> of a venerable public body transforming itself into a dynamic
> commercial enterprise. Last year it had a surplus of £9.2m, though
> only part was returned to the Treasury. But the bulk of its revenues
> come from the public sector, partly through a payment called the
> National Interest Mapping Services (Nims), worth £13m a year, and
> partly from deals with government bodies.
>
> The latest of the deals is under negotiation. Yesterday, the
> government was due to receive bids for a £20m contract to provide
> geographical information to Whitehall bodies. In theory, it is an open
> competition. In practice, the largest part of the contract, for "large
> scale data", is unlikely to go to anyone else: the contract specifies
> that the winner must have large-scale maps in place within six weeks
> of the start of a five-year deal.
>
> The OS told the Guardian: "We are bidding for pan-government agreement
> and we operate in fair competition under heavy scrutiny. The only
> monopoly we have is in the mapping of uneconomic areas." In 2004-05,
> 47.5% of its £100.4m trading revenue came from government (which
> allows it to claim that it is not government funded). It says Nims is
> not a subsidy: "This is a contribution to the cost of mapping
> uneconomic areas."
>
> Profit centres
>
> That makes sense - if you consider the geography of the United Kingdom
> to be a profit centre. But if you view it instead as belonging to its
> taxpayers, and meriting rigorous mapping for their benefit, there are
> no "uneconomic areas" - only places that people haven't started to use
> yet.
>
> Happily, the practice of state-owned monopolies competing in markets
> dependent on their information is under attack from several quarters.
> A new trade association, Locus, is calling for the government to
> enforce a level playing field in the market in public sector
> information.
>
> And some of the most copyright-mad government organisations have
> relented. Hansard, the record of proceedings in parliament, was once a
> paper product that had to be bought from Her Majesty's Stationery
> Office. Now it is online, for free, so that sites like
> theyworkforyou.com can generate useful data about individual MPs'
> voting and attendance.
>
> The Office of Fair Trading is preparing a report on public sector
> information, due this summer, which will "look at whether or not the
> way in which public sector information holders (PSIH) supply
> information works well for businesses. It will examine whether PSIHs
> have an unfair advantage selling on information in competition with
> companies who are reliant on the PSIH for that raw data in the first
> place."
>
> Though it may already be shooting for an open goal, we urge the OFT to
> compare the UK with the US; read Peter Weiss's paper; and then,
> finally, to free our data.
>
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