Because you’ve been waiting ages, here’s my over­view of the free maps package the govern­ment are (sort of) offering with every option for Ordnance Survey’s future.

As for the rest, Simply Understand’s kryptonite might well be busi­ness speak. It’s on it’s way. Not proving easy though. Definitely an area I need more exper­i­ence in.

Free mapping data for all?

Back in November the govern­ment said some of Ordnance Survey’s mapping data (also known as geograph­ical inform­a­tion, or GI) would be released for free. Don’t get too excited, because the date hasn’t been set yet, and they’re still not sure how they’re going to afford it.

However, this consulta­tion does talk about what they might be giving out:

• Street level data (OS Street View)
  Road features, building outlines, trees and water
• Maps
  1:25,000 scale — maps going down to fences separ­ating land, like the Explorer maps
  1:50,000 scale - 20km map tiles like the Landranger maps
  1:250,000 scale - all the major roads, rail­ways and places for basic route plan­ning
  1:1 000 000 scale (Miniscale) — good for simple maps without too much information
• Towns and place names (Gazetteer)
• Postcodes (Code-Point)
  There’s still some debate about what it would take to have a proper national post­code database.
• Local Authority borders (Boundary-Line)
• Roads and land­scape features (Meridian and Strategi)

This list might change, but there’s poten­tial to add more in the future, too. Ordnance Survey have to main­tain and update the data too.

As you can see, there’s some prob­lems with post­code data. There’s no one data­base with everything in it. There are quite a few post­code data­bases around, and they all do different things. At least two companies are involved too, Royal Mail and the NLPG, and at the moment they want to protect the money they make from their data.

A national post­code database

If we want one national post­code data­base, we need someone in govern­ment to cham­pion the cause and find some solu­tions to prob­lems with how to fund it and main­tain it. Various govern­ment depart­ments are trying to work with everyone and find a solu­tion, but there’s a lot to think about and it needs someone to help drive it.

Copyright

The idea is to have this map data avail­able under Creative Commons.

How are we going to get to all this data?


There are four ways:

• Just looking – for the general public, with search, printing and the ability to see the data. Probably no satel­lite images or direc­tions service though.
• Downloading – select an area of the map and types of inform­a­tion, and save them to your harddrive
• API – free to access but will prob­ably be limited in some way (perhaps traffic) to keep costs down.
• Order on DVD, and get charged for the discs, postage and packing.

Ordnance Survey anti­cip­ates these will move with the times as tech­no­logy gets better and faster.

The winners

New busi­ness
All this free data will help people create new, inter­esting and prof­it­able services and products. In Canada a similar scheme has increased map sales quite a lot.

…and losers

• Ordnance Survey
  This free scheme does mean OS will lose money. It will also cost just under £10m over 5 years to set up the service.
• Their part­ners
  The people who work with OS and add value to the existing mapping info will have a lot more competition.
• Competitors
  These are popular products which have some rivals, and we’re setting the cost of these products at £0. Some compet­itors might lose out.
• Map buyers
  Less maps might get printed, because people are down­loading and printing them instead. If this happens, the govern­ment might support a national series of maps.

There’s more to come, but that ought to keep you all busy!