[Talk-GB] Council Footpath data

[Adam Snape]

Hi All,

As the quarterly project has just been announced I thought I'd provide an
update on my progress with systematically contacting councils regarding
PRoW data.  I'm trying to get as many as possible released, up-to-date,
under a clear unambiguous OGL3 licence and pro-actively published by the
councils (thus removing the need to repeat the process a couple of years
down the line.

As you can imagine it's a large task, so the time taken to do it and the
speed of local government action means that in many cases results won't be
useable until after the quarterly project. That said, progress so far is
encouraging,  I've checked or contacted all the county councils and I've
started working my way through the Metropolitan Boroughs/Unitary
Authorities. The responses I've had back have mostly been fairly
encouraging (a minority less than encouraging!), I've had quite a few
updated or new datasets, OGL licences and Open Data releases, some of which
I have already sent to Barry at Rowmaps, I have a few more which I'll send
in the coming days. Perhaps most encouragingly a surprisingly high
proportion (albeit probably still a minority) have committed to proactively
publish their data in the coming months.

Finally, In the coming days  I'll update Rob Whittaker with my progress so
that his PRoW OpenData table ( http://robert.mathmos.net/osm/prow/open-data/
) so that it can be updated.

Kind regards,

Adam Snape

On 1 June 2018 at 09:10, Nick Whitelegg <nick.whitelegg at solent.ac.uk> wrote:

>
> Hello Adam,
>
> That's great - that will be very useful.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Adam Snape <adam.c.snape at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* 31 May 2018 19:07:05
> *To:* Nick Whitelegg
> *Cc:* Robert Whittaker (OSM lists); Talk GB
>
> *Subject:* Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data
>
> Hi Nick,
>
> Yes Hampshire's data is unambiguously available for use under OGL3.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Adam
>
> On Thu, 31 May 2018, 09:52 Nick Whitelegg, <nick.whitelegg at solent.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> (Adam - apologies for not quoting, but this email client performs the
> annoying habit of top-posting and haven't figured out a way to get it to do
> standard quotes).
>
>
> So, just to clarify, taking my local authority (Hampshire) as an example,
> does this page _definitely_ confirm that their RoW data is available under
> OGL?
>
>
> https://www.hants.gov.uk/aboutthecouncil/informationandstats/opendata/
> opendatasearch/publicrightsofway
>
>
> Reason being that I'm now in a position where I may be able to do
> something with this data and I'd like to use Hampshire as it's my local
> county.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Adam Snape <adam.c.snape at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* 30 May 2018 11:37:47
> *To:* Nick Whitelegg
> *Cc:* Robert Whittaker (OSM lists); talk-gb
> *Subject:* Re: [Talk-GB] Council Footpath data
>
> Hi,
>
> Just a word of warning to double check the licensing terms before use.
> Many councils' licensing is ambiguous in that they'll refer to the OGL then
> state or link to the incompatible OS Open Data attribution terms.
>
> Whilst it's a wonderful resource and I think Barry has done a great job,
> the rowmaps site doesn't help with licensing clarity. There are quite a few
> references to unverifiable private email communications where the licence
> terms differ from the publicly available terms. Any mention of the OGL is
> taken at face value even if when checked the licence is actually the OS
> modified OGL ie. the incompatible OS Open Data licence! Perhaps most
> seriously, rowmaps also relies on a misinterpretation of communication with
> OS to suggest that OS Open Data licensed material is now automatically OGL3
> licenced material.
>
> All of this matters very little to most users of rowmaps but for OSM
> purposes as we require ODBL compatibility we need greater clarity.
>
> Over the coming months I'm hoping to individually clarify licensing with
> all of the authorities which haven't explicitly, unambiguously and publicly
> licensed their RoW data under OGL3 (and, yes, I know that's most of them).
> I'll also try and get new or updated data where not currently available or
> several years old. Ideally I'll get the authorities to include a clear
> unambiguous licence on their websites but, failing that, I'll publish the
> relevant communication online so that it is verifiable and we do at least
> have certainty about the data currently available to us.
>
> In the slightly longer term I think our aim needs to be to persuade all
> authorities to proactively publish new versions of their data as open data,
> rather than individuals having to individually badger authorities to update
> their data. Under their Publication Schemes they should start doing this
> automatically once information is supplied the first time, but it seems
> that only a minority of authorities who have released data currently
> publish it proactively.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Adam
>
>
> On 27 May 2018 at 11:21, Nick Whitelegg <nick.whitelegg at solent.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
>
> Thanks for that - looks like a few councils are OGL which means we should
> theoretically be able to add designation tags from the council data.
>
>
> Agree about not copying the data verbatim from council data - am more
> interested in giving people a way to easily identify council paths unmapped
> on OSM.
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
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