Surface Water Flood Management

Another British summer, another washout! This time, however, we in LPS, and particularly the Local Authorities, were responsible for preventing as well as cleaning up thanks to the new legislation. This has been helped by the release of a new data set from the Environment Agency of run off flood zones. This has been particularly of use in authorities such as Swindon, where the geology is almost entirely clay – albeit a mix of “good” and “bad” clays. When the really bad floods hit the South West, hardly any of the major flooded areas were on a fluvial or tidal flood plain, hence the need for this information on Surface Water Run Off flooding. The release of the OS data has also helped this, as the BGS have now made their data free to use which was based on the 1:50,000 scale maps, and so previously needed royalties to be paid for before release. Also at Swindon is part of a pilot where several authorities have received 2 partly paid for graduate students, specialising in environmental and risk management.

This is, however, in some cases leading to issues around people trying to spend money too soon, believe it or not! – The inspire project will enable us to hold, discover and share all this data freely, so the main aim now is to ensure it is all valid, up to date, and held in an extractable manner. I raise the issue of jumping the gun, as there are also people from DEFRA, HAUC and several others getting on the band wagon. I urge all GI officers to make sure they are aware of what their Emergency Planners, Traffic Managers, and Senior Planners are doing with this data to avoid duplication of effort. Its not too late if this is the first you have heard of all this, and there isn’t much to do, so I suggest you contact them in the order above, and offer your assistance in shared display/supply of data expertise.

Notice: NLPG NSG Exemplar Awards and annual conference

This year's 'new look' NLPG NSG Exemplar Awards are already attracting interest. With a new focus on the things that will really help to attract attention from heads of service; the citizen, money, green issues, as well as technology and integration, the Awards will help to raise the profile of your LLPG within your organization.

Please do have a look at the Exemplar Awards brochure on the NLPG and NSG websites.

The Awards will be presented at the NLPG NSG annual conference ‘Everything Happens Somewhere’ which takes place in Sheffield on 20 October.

The conference is designed to be extremely cost effective – its free to attend, thanks to the sponsorship of the exhibitors, and due to a partnership with South Yorkshire Tourism, there are discounted rail and accommodation deals available. This conference is a celebration of the work that you do - contributing to the wider community. Please do come along, especially if you haven't been before.  See the leaflet ‘Your time is valuable’ which outlines why you should attend.

If there is someone at your authority that you would like to bring with you to the conference, or feel that they should get an invite, email ggander@intelligent-addressing.co.uk with their contact details (email and postal) and we will get a special invite to them.   This could be your line manager, someone from another directorate thinking about using the NLPG, your head of information , or with this year's focus on efficiency savings, your finance director. Please use this opportunity to show why your LLPG is important in your authority.

Key themes within the conference include:

* the importance of location to service delivery
* the use of the NLPG by the emergency services
* using location information to generate business savings
* achieving efficiency savings through joined up data
* using intelligence to provide better services for citizens
* an insight into technology and services that enhances interaction between the public sector and its customers
* approaches to and the importance of sharing data across different agencies and partnership working
* case studies from Exemplar authorities

The conference promises to be a very valuable day spent hearing from key industry experts combined with networking opportunities, a well supported exhibition and also includes the presentation of the 2010 NLPG NSG Exemplar Awards.

The conference is jointly organised by Local Government Information House (LGIH) (part of Local Government Improvement and Development) and Intelligent Addressing Ltd.

To register please visit the registration website and for further information see the NLPG and NSG websites

If you have any questions about the event, please contact Gayle Gander, ggander@intelligent-addressing.co.uk on 020 7747 3500

Some GI links

Just a quick update on some of the GI related links that have popped up in the last few weeks. These vary with a broad set of topics from planned changes to the PSMA, copies of the presentations from the Share to save LPS event, to the full report on the Value of Geospatial Information from the LGA.

Click to read more ...

#sharetosave…some thoughts by Graham Hyde

The inaugural Local Public Services SIG event took place at Local Government House in Smith Square, London on Tuesday 29th June 2010. The event was entitled #sharetosave, an idea that I totally support. The ability to do something once and to share that with others adds significant weight to the inevitable business case. The Public Sector is full of duplication. There are hundreds of Health related organisations, hundreds of local authorities, many many central government departments and even more arms length bodies, quangoes and authorities, all wanting to make the most of place. So lets make it easy and help them.

In its response to the Ordnance Survey consultation, Government decided to make certain datasets freely available. On 1st April 2010, this became OS OpenDataTM. Government also decided that it should move to a centrally funded Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA). By 1st April 2011, this will be in place. PSMA will bring together the core datasets currently provided by three separate Mapping Agreements, the Pan Government Agreement (PGA), the Mapping Services Agreement (MSA) and the NHS Digital Mapping Agreement (DMA). So here we see three into one. Cost saving and efficiencies ahoy!

There is also the possibility of a National Address Register too. This is surely a massive boost for the #sharetosave mantra and long overdue. Getting the intellectual property rights sorted out in this country over Addressing should be up there at number one on the #sharetosave agenda. Personally, I would get all parties together in a room and knock their heads together but I’m not sure that approach would work. As a real world example of this madness, the Office for National Statistics has spent a rumoured £12million on an address list to deliver its census forms next year. Every time I hear this mentioned I get angry and frustrated that this was allowed to happen. I find the sum of money quoted both vast and unnecessary to the point of insanity. I realise there are often very good reasons for everything but I have never understood the need for 3 different databases which surely could have been one. A missed opportunity? I’m not the only one either: “We welcome the creation of a national address register for the census, but find it barely credible that this valuable resource is not to be maintained after 2011. We recommend that the Government deal with the intellectual property issues which inhibit maintenance of the register as a matter of urgency.” The UK Parliament London Regional Committee: London’s population and the 2011 Census. I am convinced that Addressing is being dealt with.

So that’s data sorted out then. Or is it? It might be free, but is it useable?

What do we as the Public Sector do with all this data? Download it to our C drives and leave it there? Will we get to the situation where many people within an organisation download data to their C drives and leave it there or download the data and come back to it in a year’s time, carry out some analysis, deliver a service and then find the raw data was out of date? We’ve been here before haven’t we?

Service is important for PSMA members. Should we ask each organisation take a series of DVDs, CDs or online downloads, load the data into their spatial databases and serve it out to all of their mapping implementations? #sharetosave? Let’s leave data provision to the experts. Web map services, web feature services and online tile rendering services. Let’s get someone else to manage data. Economies of scale dictate that doing something on a national level (once) rather than a local level (many) will mean an overall saving. Does each Local Authority actually need its own copy of MasterMap Topography layer? Having someone else manage your data will mean it is always there, always be up-to-date and there is no costly internal IT infrastructure to maintain and support. Does the Public Sector trust The Cloud enough?

Here’s an idea. Lets actually do what as GIS Professionals we went to University for and we enjoy and love. Lets allow our organisations to reap the benefit of free data together with the benefits of hosted data services. We can finally get our hands dirty and do some spatial analysis.

What I took away from the AGI LPS SIG event was that there are many organisations and people doing lots of good geo-tastic things in many different ways. Where is the #sharetosave here? The market has a hand in this. With the money to be made from reselling Ordnance Survey data now gone, the market must focus on services and solutions. This is all well and good but with so many companies out there touting for business there will be a mixture of solutions emerging. There will not be a standard #sharetosave platform, solution or deliverable. Is this what #sharetosave is aiming? Not in my mind. I don’t profess to understand the intricacies of economics but to me this is like having multiple address databases. Could we ever get to one common solution, one common architecture, one common deliverable?

It is certainly true that these are very interesting times in the Public Sector. Reduced budgets, cuts, doing more with less are all fantastic opportunities for us to show the power of GI and how place should be embedded into Public Sector thinking to deliver real benefits.

republished with thanks

Local public services event - One day to go!

Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow at our Local Public Services Event event "Share to Save: How GI can equip the public sector to do more with less".  We have had a great response and are now fully booked with delegates from a range of professions and industries, so the conversation should be interesting to say the least.

To those of you who can't make it in person, follow us on our Twitter account (@AGILPSSIG) or just use the event hashtag of #sharetosave to stay up-to-date with what is happening and to join in the conversation.  Looking forward to hearing from you.

Presentations and findings of the event will be published on our blog and LPS SIG web pages.

Talk soon

Hendrik Grothuis

Chair, LPS SIG