Public Sector Mapping Agreement – Seriously, no joke.

April 1^st is fast becoming a memorable date in the calendar not just for practical jokes.  It could potentially be renamed as “GI Day”. 

As a result of the Ordnance Survey Consultation we saw the release of OS OpenData^TM on 1^st April 2010.  This made a selection of Ordnance Survey mapping available for unrestricted reuse and exploitation.  1^st April 2011 will see an equally significant event when Government makes an extensive range of core products from Ordnance Survey available as the Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA).  It will be the largest collective agreement between Ordnance Survey and Communities and Local Government (CLG) and brings together the Pan Government Agreement, Mapping Services Agreement, NHS Digital Mapping Agreement and the Greater London Agreement.

Key features of PSMA.

• a portfolio of core products covering Great Britain supplied by Ordnance Survey, plus the scheduled updates of the OS OpenData products;
• membership open to all eligible public sector organisations in England and Wales;
• centrally-funded by CLG.  CLG does not invoice members for any PSMA-related fees.  The PAF costs for the PSMA are also centrally-funded;
• the same licence terms for all members to promote and enable data sharing, with provision to supply data and derived data with Contractors and End Users;
• ability to share derived data with the public sector covered by the OSMA;
• Free To Use licensing included
• An exemption process that allows members to apply for derived data to be released as Free To Use data.

The PSMA supports two key government objectives; the Devolution and Localism Bill which devolves greater powers to councils/individuals and the Transparency agenda to deliver better value for money in public spending.  PSMA will give the Public Sector access to a wide range of geographic data provided by Ordnance Survey and will result in significant cost savings, greater data sharing, more effective joint working which will drive forward improvements in public services in England and Wales.

Members of all existing collective purchase agreements are eligible to join PSMA including some others.  Town and parish councils together with emergency responders such as Mountain Rescue and RNLI are also eligible.

Licensing is becoming simpler too.  New licenses are being worked on which backs up Ordnance Survey’s commitment to making licensing less complicated.  PSMA Members will be able to use the data for any non commercial purpose so long as it is in the delivery of Government policy and services defined as their core business.

A significant outcome of the Government’s response to the OS Consultation was the desire to introduce a National Address Gazetteer (NAG).  Details are still to be finalised but it is not an easy task to leverage the benefits of the National Land and Property Gazetteer, Ordnance Survey Address Layer 2 and Royal Mail PAF into a new product.

A public sector Geographic Information (GI) Group will be established to provide strategic direction for the agreement.  This will be led by an independent chair, and members will represent the interests of the public sector as a whole.  The GI Group will engage with public sector users to provide feedback to Ordnance Survey on how the PSMA should develop over time.  Proposals are in place to also create a network of regional based User/Technical Groups to engage Policy Makers in the use of GI and focussed on ensuring that the best use of Ordnance Survey’s data can be made.

The PSMA will predominantly be a web based experience.  Members of existing mapping agreements will migrate to the PSMA but must go through a sign up process and agree to the revised/new licence terms.  Super Users in each Member organisation will be able to grant access to other users within their organisation, or contractors, but still retain control over the data holding.  Depending upon size, orders may be delivered through a download service similar to that used by the already well established OS OpenData^TM.  Organisations will be able to manage their entire Ordnance Survey data holding in one place including OS OpenData^TM, PSMA and any commercial data arrangements.  Updates to datasets will be pushed through this channel too.

Lifting the cost barrier from Ordnance Survey product gives organisations the opportunity to use highly detailed and rich datasets which were previously out of reach.  MasterMap Topography Layer, Integrated Transport Network and VectorMap Local are three such high value products. 

One issue though is what is the Value of Free?  Perception may be that now much of Ordnance Survey’s data is free to the Public Sector, it may have no value.  What happens to all the GI data budgets from Local Authority’s?  Is it simply handed back to the Finance Director and offered up as a cost saving or perhaps the challenge is for GI people to keep hold of the budget to invest in technology, training or other peripherals.  I think we all know what the answer is here.

Free shouldn’t be confused with useful though.  Not all users who will be signing up to PSMA have the skills necessary to manage the formats or volume of data which will be offered by Ordnance Survey.  Support is therefore critical for these users.  This is where the PSMA can offer and leg up to the GI Market Place.  Managed services, hosted services, tile caching or web services could be built on top of PSMA to provide data in more useful ways.

One of the major challenges and especially within the financial constraints imposed upon the Public Sector is how the success of PSMA is measured?  The up take of Ordnance Survey MasterMap products, cost savings made as a result of more detailed analysis or GI becoming mainstream and underpinning more Public Sector decisions?  More efficient bus or refuse collection routing, wider sharing of best practice across the public sector or more joined up working and data sharing across Local Government and the Health sector.

The introduction of the Public Sector Mapping Agreement on April 1^st 2011 may not make the front pages and is not a joke, but it is a significant milestone in Public Sector GI and brings with it many opportunities for the GI Community to show the power of Geographical Information.

Post by Graham Hyde Nov 2010

Comments

[Hendrik]

Thanks Graham. A really informative and useful post. As part of the challenge of holding onto GI budgets with the launch of the PSMA, it is crucial that public services are able to add value to this new rich data source, which some organisations may have had trouble accessing in the past.

Apologies for the plug, but a good starting point is to have a look at some of the Local Public Services (LPS) SIG posted case studies (http://www.agi.org.uk/past-events/2010/7/7/lpssig-event-presentations.html) that are already available.
All of us involved in public services really need to show the added value of GI data and what it can offer in terms of intelligence gathering and efficiencies to our colleagues across all departments and professions. As part of this, what other best practice GI public services case studies are available? Are there any specific examples that you would like to see or are aware of? Drop us a line and we can post more up on the LPS SIG web pages and remember the SIG is for all members of the publics services, including Local Government, Health and Emergency Planning. Either contact the SIG Committee, or just send us a tweet @AGILPSSIG.