Ordnance Survey wins prestigious national award for Agile working

Britain’s national mapping agency won the award for Best Use of Agile in the public sector at the 2012 UK Agile Awards, held at The Grand Connaught Rooms in London, presented by Yoh.

Ordnance Survey’s Generic Online Ordering Service Engine (GOOSE) project team were publicly recognised for their adoption of the Agile methodology to deliver a one stop shop for customers ordering and downloading Ordnance Survey data.

Ordnance Survey is helping the public sector to break the mould as it moves into its fourth year of Agile working. Agile is seen by many in the software development industry as the pinnacle of software development practices, and in line with the Government’s ICT strategy of delivering efficient, cost-effective public services.

A variety of Agile principles were adopted by the GOOSE project team in 2009, pioneering the implementation of the methodology and paving the way for Agile transformation across the organisation. Working on a bespoke and technically complex business-to-business and business-to-government ecommerce system, the team overcame cultural barriers and introduced new working practices. In two years the team transformed the customer experience giving customers a one stop shop for ordering Ordnance Survey data, with order placement and fulfillment fully automated.

Bob Goodrich, Director of Information Systems at Ordnance Survey, said the introduction of Agile was essential. ‘We’re extremely proud to see the GOOSE project team recognised for their use of Agile. Agile was adopted at a time when we had put a lot of resource and money into developing an online ordering system,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t working and we decided to go down another path. The team have worked extremely hard to deliver the project and achieve this award despite facing many challenges along the way.’

As the Agile methodology began to be more widely adopted, the GOOSE team provided assistance and lessons learnt to the new teams. As these teams delivered successfully, Ordnance Survey adopted Agile as its delivery methodology in late 2011, instigating the Agile Transformation Programme which sees all Information Systems’ projects work very closely with the product owners and stakeholders across the organisation, sharing the vision of cross business collaboration within an Agile framework.

Director of Products at Ordnance Survey, Peter ter Haar, said, ‘The collaborative benefits of Agile cannot be overestimated. The product teams now work closely with the Agile projects, ensuring greater understanding of customers’ needs and being able to meet those needs faster. The Agile principles of delivering in incremental batches mean we are not waiting for a final fully-functional delivery and can instead be involved in testing and providing feedback along the way.’

The Agile Awards recognise the people, projects, and innovations that adopt and apply the Agile methodology in the UK. The Agile community nominates candidates based on their extraordinary contributions to the challenge of developing Agile. A Board of peers then assesses the scope, impact, and potential of each candidate. The Board are looking for how heavily nominees embraced the Agile approach and how closely Agile practices were followed and in achieving successful completion of their projects.

Dotted Eyes delivers 4 years of fault free performance

Large, centrally managed IT contracts in the NHS have not always received good press, which is why it’s great to hear about those that succeed. With the NHS Digital Mapping Agreement now at its end, Dotted Eyes is celebrating the successful delivery of a high quality service to over 130 NHS organisations over the last four years in partnership with the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC).

The Digital Mapping Agreement was brokered by the HSCIC to enable the NHS to gain access to geographic data in a ready-to-use format at a minimum cost. In 2008 Dotted Eyes, one of the UK’s leading GIS solution houses, was awarded the contract by the HSCIC through an OJEU procurement.

During its four year life-cycle Dotted Eyes delivered over 3.5 terabytes of mapping data to over 130 NHS organisations. All of this data was delivered fully optimised for each individual organisation so that they could use it immediately and extract as much value as possible from the service.

Updates to the data were delivered on a quarterly basis for many products, meaning that over 700 deliveries were made on time and on budget.

To ensure service quality was consistently high, it was agreed at the onset that it would be monitored and guided by the Steering Committee, facilitated by the HSCIC. The quality of service proved to be of such a high standard that no penalty points were awarded throughout the whole contract.

With the Digital Mapping agreement now at a close and superseded by the Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA), the last Steering Committee meeting was recently held to agree on the final elements of the migration to the PSMA.

Ben Allan, MD of Dotted Eyes, commented “This has been a fantastic success. To improve, customise and deliver so much data in such a seamless and faultless manner has been a real triumph. It’s a great example of how the public and private sector can work together to successfully deliver a common goal.”

HSCIC chief executive Tim Straughan said: “High quality, timely data is absolutely vital for organisations to make effective decisions and ultimately benefit patient care. This contract has been an example of where innovation through partnership can deliver secure, relevant and consistent information to multiple organisations; supporting intelligent planning and delivery.”

To find out more, please contact Dotted Eyes on info@dottedeyes.com or +44 (0) 121 232 8000.

New dates for Ordnance Survey’s free open data masterclasses

People across Great Britain are being given the opportunity to gain a greater understanding of open data and the tools and techniques to use open datasets, through a series of free masterclasses hosted by Ordnance Survey.

The fourth series of open data masterclasses builds on the success of its predecessors, attended by over 500 people so far. Individuals, developers, community groups, social entrepreneurs, commercial and government organisations are invited to attend the masterclasses, run by Ordnance Survey and supported by Horizon Digital Economy Research.

For the first time, based on feedback from previous sessions, participants will have the opportunity to use OS OpenSpace, Ordnance Survey’s free web mapping service that allows users to display up-to-date Ordnance Survey mapping in a web page or online environment. Those attending will learn how and where to access code examples, how to use Web-Map Builder, a tool designed to simplify the process of embedding a map into a website; as well as demonstrating an interactive way to experiment with code in the new Code Playground.

In addition, the open data masterclasses will combine theory and practical sessions and provide participants with the opportunity to use and harness free-to-use open datasets, including Ordnance Survey’s own free-to-use OS OpenData.

Those attending will learn a range of techniques, from data collection and processing, to data analysis and map visualisation. The focus on the day will be guided, hands-on practical sessions, using data from Ordnance Survey and data.gov.uk.

The content of the masterclasses is suitable for a wide spectrum of participants with various levels of IT experience, although some familiarity with web browsing and Microsoft Excel is assumed.

Ordnance Survey is able to offer up to 40 places at each masterclass, running from 9.30 am until 4.30 pm each day. Locations and dates of the sessions:

14 November – Aberdeen http://odmc-aberdeen.eventbrite.co.uk/
15 November – Edinburgh http://odmc-edinburgh.eventbrite.co.uk/
20 November – London http://odmc-london.eventbrite.co.uk/
26 November – Cardiff http://odmc-cardiff.eventbrite.co.uk/
30 November – Nottingham http://odmc-nottingham.eventbrite.co.uk/

Interested participants should click on the relevant link to reserve their space and obtain a masterclass ticket.

More information on OS OpenData is available on the Ordnance Survey website: http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/os-opendata.html

Winners of the 2012 GeoPlace Exemplar Awards are Announced

London, 25th October 2012 - GeoPlace, the centre of excellence for the management of spatial address information and street data for Great Britain, has today announced the winners of the 2012 Exemplar Awards.

The Awards celebrated excellence in service delivery that had been enabled through local government address and street information.  They recognised the vital role address and street information professionals play in local service delivery, celebrating their achievements and providing external acknowledgement of innovation, creativity, best practice, hard work and achievement.

The Award Ceremony took place as part of the 'Everything Happens Somewhere' conference, which was held on 25^th October 2012 in Central London.  Both the Exemplar Awards and the conference itself were aimed at supporting local government address and street information specialists, together with street naming and numbering officials. 

The main category winners of the 2012 Exemplar Awards are:

Citizen Award: Caerphilly County Borough Council.  On behalf of the Aber Valley Heritage Group and the wider community, Caerphilly County Borough Council mapped the addresses of all 440 victims of the 1913 Senghenydd Collier Explosion to help in telling the story of the UK’s worst ever mining disaster.

Improvement and Efficiency Award: Kent County Council.  With the aim of improving public safety, whilst at the same time reducing costs, Kent County Council developed a system to lessen the occurrence of potholes and footway defects, and find and swiftly fix those which do occur with fewer Road Safety Inspectors and lower compensation claims.

Integration Award: London Borough of Harrow.  Focusing on the delivery of ‘more for less’, the London Borough of Harrow created an in-house solution providing a platform for all staff to access address information corporately  at a fraction of what they had previously paid to a private company.

Services Award: Bath and North East Somerset Council.  After commissioning 360-degree street level photography for integration into its web based GIS, Bath and North East Somerset Council dynamically linked the data to their local address dataset in order to make that data fully searchable and maximise the return on investment, leading to savings right across the council.

Best Example of Street Naming and Numbering Policy Implementation Award: Adur and Worthing Councils.  In order to streamline services, reduce lengthy paperwork processes and create additional revenue, Adur and Worthing Councils amalgamated the Street Naming and Numbering Services employed across the two councils via a shared service.

GeoPlace is a public sector limited liability partnership between the Local Government Association and Ordnance Survey.  GeoPlace’s role is to create and maintain the National Address Gazetteer and the National Street Gazetteer for England and Wales, providing definitive sources of publicly-owned spatial address and street data for Great Britain.  Through agreement with Scotland’s Improvement Service Company, coverage has been extended to include Scotland’. 

For more information, visit www.geoplace.co.uk.

Contacts:

GeoPlace contact:

Gayle Gander

Head of Marketing

+44(0) 20 7630 4600

gayle.gander@geoplace.co.uk

www.geoplace.co.uk

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Turn £1 to £2.25 this Christmas for MapAction

This Christmas, every £1 you donate to MapAction through the Big Give Christmas Challenge could be magically turned into £2.25 through matched giving and Gift Aid*. So £10 could become £22.50 at no extra cost to yourself!

From 10am on Thursday 6 December until Saturday 8 December, all online donations to MapAction through the Big Give Christmas Challenge could be eligible for this matched funding. MapAction is aiming to raise £18,000, which could cover the cost of deploying its volunteers to three humanitarian emergencies – but they need your help to achieve this.

There are limited matched funds released at 10am each day, so to avoid missing out on the opportunity to more than double your donation, please register for a reminder at www.mapaction.org/biggive. MapAction will only contact you with reminders about this Challenge, unless you have already subscribed to other communications. If matched funds have been exhausted for the day when you log in to donate, you can either make a donation without benefitting from the matched giving element (Gift Aid would still  be applicable), or wait for a new release of matched funds at 10am on the following day.

Please do set yourself a reminder to donate at 10am on Thursday 6 th, Friday 7 th and/or Saturday 8 th December and take part in this incredible opportunity to support MapAction’s humanitarian mapping service. Thank you!

* a 4% processing fee will be deducted from your donation.