Free event - webinar

eLearning with GIS247

Join us for a Webinar on May 4

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/601840998

GIS247 provides thousands of ArcGIS and MapInfo users with an ‘always on’ source of training giving them the ability to develop their skills at their own pace.  In this FREE Webinar GIS247 will outline the clear benefits to both individuals and their organisation in being able to have access to a powerful, flexible and cost effective approach to training and technical support.  In 45 minutes we will
- outline the type and scope of the training courses and technical modules that are available
- show how the presentations, exercises and data are accessed
- provide a live example of the training
- give a tour of the resources that are available to help users plan and manage their training
- provide an overview of GIS247’s popular training assessment process
- outline the experience of some of our users
- explain the role of the GIS247 administrator and how they can review and manage the performance of their organizations users
Title:  eLearning with GIS247
Date:   Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Time:   11:00 AM - 12:00 PM BST
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.
System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

The NHS is in a state

The NHS is in a state…..of flux.  With Andrew Lansley taking over in the health hot seat after the last general election, he took no time at all in letting us all know his vision for the future of the NHS.  So radical were these plans that they did not make their way into the Conservative Party election manifesto.  You can read about these changes in the many papers he has published but two of the most pertinent are Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS and Healthy lives, healthy people: our strategy for public health in England.

The future is GP lead commissioning with the removal of PCTs and SHAs.  OK, fine.  Are all GPs in it for the love of the job or are they in it to make money?  Do they want to give the face to face bad news to a patient that they think the money they could spend on some life extending drugs for them, will actually be spend to fund operations to save the lives of 4 children.  Tough call.  This kind of bad news is currently handled faceless administrators in the PCTs.

Traditional geography will disappear in the form of Primary Care Organisations and Strategic Health Authorities.  How will health use Geography – or not – when the NHS is restructured?  It is certain that the lowest geographical unit will be the GP Practice, but that doesn’t have a defined geography.  A patient can now register with any GP, anywhere they like.  Each GP must organise himself into a GP Consortia creating a cluster of GPs, again, with no defined geography.  The Public Health paper does state…. p. 62 Paragraph 4.5 GP consortia will have responsibility for the whole population in their area.  How?  The population that are registered with a GP are covered, what about those that aren’t?

Do we need defined health geography as we have had?  Perhaps not.  A GP Consortia will have to report to a Local Authority, could be more than one, but to report health statistics at Local Authority level would be unhelpful for health inequalities and health needs analysis, regeneration, service planning.  Would publication of health information be better at lower levels?  I think so.  Make more use of Lower Level Super Output Areas.  These are well established building blocks which are small enough to identify areas of need within a Local Authority.  Small numbers may be a problem, but there lies another issue.  Information Governance around health information is tight to say the least.  Should it be?  To be honest if I thought my health information was being analysed and would inform decision makers on more appropriate service provision or targeted intervention programmes, I don’t care.  I’d probably already have posted it on Twitter or Facebook anyway!

A post on the Guardian DataBlog Few patterns in GP commissioning pathfinders on 12th January 2011, reveals a lovely map, using Google.  Last month the DoH named the first 52 pathfinder consortia. Information from eight of England’s 10 SHAs revealed GPs have grouped into around 260 consortia, suggesting there will be 300-350 nationwide.  DoH national clinical commissioning network lead Dr James Kingsland warned the figure was ‘frighteningly similar’ to the original number of PCTs. There were 302 PCTs before mergers in 2006 created the current set of 152

Each Pathfinder Consortia does include a geography, mostly Local Authorities or Counties.  An interesting point is raised “…The range of sizes and types of consortia allows for experimentation. It might cause problems later as the remaining GP practices have to choose a consortia to join, and could be forced to fill in the gaps – although it’s possible they would be able to join existing consortia. And health secretary Andrew Lansley is clearly more interested at this stage in trying new models and seeing what works, rather than keeping the picture tidy.”

In my day job I have been trying to engage with Policy people but with little success.  It would appear that the NHS restructure does not consider Geography to be very high up on its list of things to do.  What I find worrying, is that resolving the issue of Geography within Health may be a done deal already without any consultation or expert advice.

Perhaps DoH has a Plan B up its sleeve anyway and the reforms are just too big a deal?  Time will tell.

Republished with thanks from Graham Hyde's blog: http://allthingsgeo.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/what-about-the-geography/

Localism and a happy Christmas

We have had a big year of change and there are even more challenges in the coming months.  Mainly surrounding the issues of doing more with less in public services, increased open and transparent data, the challenge of the cloud and using geospatial technologies for the streamlining and greater efficiency of services offered. 

However, the biggest challenge for all of us is the transformation of how public services are to be delivered.  Related to this, The Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) have recently published the Decentralisation and the Localism Bill:an essential guide which is useful, if not essential reading for us in the future.  There are six essential actions listed for turning power over from the centralised state to local communities:
1. Lift the burden of bureaucracy
2. Empower communities to do things their way
3. Increase local control of public finance
4. Diversify the supply of public services
5. Open up government to public scrutiny
6. Strengthen accountability to local people

These actions are all part of the Localism Bill and will be part and parcel of the way that all of us have to respond to delivering services.  From these six actions, we who work with GI data and analysis can easily see what impact our work can have on turning the list into reality.  From provision of local services mapping (Council facilities, GP Clusters), more open data analysis/methods for the identification of resources to the use of social classification tools and socio-demographic information for the better identification of key places for the better targetting of services.  This will assist our local communities and people to be more spatially aware of their local area and what we in public services do.  The challenge awaits and the role of geospatial technologies is key.

Lastly, I would like to wish all of our members a very happy Christmas.  See you in the new year and stay in touch.

Hendrik
Chair - Local Public Services Special Interest Group

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

Value of GI data

I am attending the pre AGI unconference and the value of location is part of the panel discussion. The overall view is that location is a feature and only adds value once it is used in an application. Taking this further, we have a multitude of case studies that show the use of GI in local public services ranging from planning, transport, school admission,route optimisation, cutomer insight etc.

• But what is the actual economic value of geographic information and technology you are providing to your organisation and to your customers?
• What are the savings and productivity increases that you can make from the use of GI? 

These are questions which are of particular interest during the current climate of spending cuts.

 
The Local Government Group commissioned research to assess the value of GI and in particular to understand where changes to current geospatial policy and practice can lenable better and more effective use of GI in local public service design and delivery, and it supports cost savings in the current period of public expenditure constraint. The outcome of the study has been published and are available on the LGA website. In summary, the research found that:

• productivity increased by £ 232 million across local public service providers (NHS accounts for £ 10 million) through the use of GI in 2009. An additional £ 140 million can be saved within 6 years which would account of 2 per cent of the efficiency savings local government needs to make this year and 12 per cent by 2014/15.
• The saving through the sharing  of the NLPG as a master dataset within local authorities is estimated to be between £ 15 to 24 m in net present value. 
• Overall GI in local public services has contributed to £ 323 m in GDP in 2009. 
• An average return on investment of 1 : 2.5 over a 5 year project life cycle.

The findings will hopefully help you to make the case for location information while spending reviews are under way as they indicate the contribution information and in particular location information can make to efficiency savings. Further savings could possibly be made through the implementation of the Public Sector Mapping Agreement next April which will facilitate the sharing of mapping data amongst public sector service providers. 
 
Building on best practice examples presented at the "Share to Save" seminar organised by the Local public services SIG in summer, we are keen to hear from you about examples, how further savings can be achieved through the intelligent use of location information and related technology and the sharing of services.
 
And if you are interested in further details about location economics, the AGI are organising a seminar on exploiting location information to save your organisation money.
 
 
Dr Gesche Schmid