[Talk-GB] New Digital Master Map for Great Britian: Confidential Advice to Ministers, 2009 (and a bit of a rant)

Peter Miller peter.miller at itoworld.com
Thu Aug 27 12:58:01 BST 2009


Here is a Wikileaks document from the Ordnance Survey about their  
plans[1]. In summary, I am very very glad that we have OpenStreetMap  
alive and well in the UK because it looks as if there will be a need  
for it for some time to come because the OS are going to stay with  
their heads in the sand for some time to come!

For the record, ITO initially supported OSM because there was no  
commercial source of walking routes in the UK, and it was proving  
impossible for us to use OS data in the various novel applications we  
were devising for licensing or cost reasons of both.

First off we wanted to use OS ITN data in our NaPTAN management  
product [2] - after many emails and a final 3 way conference call with  
two separate OS experts the OS concluded that there was not an  
appropriate license and that each of our clients would have to pay  
£500 to the OS to access a system that we (and the DfT and Traveline)  
wanted them to be able to access for free. Luckily in that case we  
were able to use the reasonably priced Navteq data and now have some  
1000 registered users for the service which helps improve NaPTAN bus  
stop data and public transport schedules for the UK. Thanks Navteq!

We have also been trying recently to license some ITN data for use in  
a new transport poster product we have been developing[3] and again  
the cost from the OS was absurdly high and we only got to a named  
price after exchanging 14 emails with experts at the OS. We would have  
needed to agree to signing three separate licenses[4], all of which  
were very specific and ran to many pages. The initial yearly cost  
would have been £13,625 after which we would also have had to pay per- 
clic, per-map and per-transaction fees (per-map fees were 35p per  
printed map I seem to remember). So... it's Navteq and/or  
OpenStreetMap for that product.

Fyi, we are still awaiting clarification from the OS (at director  
level) about some possible issues around derived data in the UK public  
transport schedules which the UK transport sector needs to resolve soon.

Luckily the DfT saw all this some time ago and went to considerable  
effort (and cost) to create the NaPTAN dataset independently from the  
OS so they were able to give it to us.[5]

Needless to say many transport professionals are also getting fed-up  
with this approach and are getting increasingly interested in OSM.  
Let's keep talking to them and building relations with both central  
and local government.


[1] http://bit.ly/U87p2
[2] http://www.itoworld.com/static/naptan
[3] http://www.itoworld.com/static/atoc
[4]http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/business/licences/index.html
[5]http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/NaPTAN/Import#Rights_to_NaPTAN_data



Regards,


Peter Miller
ITO World Ltd.







More information about the Talk-GB mailing list