Everything happens somewhere: Information about location underpins over 80% of our public sector services - from planning for communities, environment, health, education, security, construction, transport, crime prevention, insurance, retail and energy, to flooding and climate change, agriculture, heritage, sport, employment and social exclusion.

Location information is crucial both to policy development and service delivery, to the development of personalised services, and to the reliable sharing of information across government. Yet currently too few Government owned datasets that incorporate location can be easily assembled and analysed. There remains too much duplication, too little reuse and an inability to link together required datasets. It has been found, for example, that between 25-50% of project time is spent trying to find, assess the quality of and use spatial data.

Implementation of the Location Strategy will maximise the value of using geographic information to the public, government and UK industry through provision of a wide ranging set of integrated data services to assist national, regional and local initiatives and service delivery. 

To ensure that the UK exploits the full value of its information, the Location Strategy requires a programme of strategic actions which ensure that:

1)       we know what data we have, and avoid duplicating it;

2)       we use common reference data so we know we are talking about the same places;

3)       we can share location-related information easily through a common infrastructure of standards, technology and business relationships;

4)       we have the appropriate skills, both among geographic professionals and among other professional groups who use location information or support its use;

5)       we have strong leadership and governance to drive through change including the implementation of this Strategy and the implementation of the EC INSPIRE Directive[1] (through the Location Council).

Mike Segal 718 days ago

I agree with much of what has been said. Management information and data sets should enhance decision making. We must take very opportunity to work across departments, by doing so we increase our ability to utilse budgets more effectively, efficiently, it increases our flexibility and agility, thereby enabling us to provide a cost effective service.

Shaun McNally 718 days ago

National Statistics supports the principles of providing information (in our case aggregate statistics) linked to maps in forms which are easy for people to use. The National Statistician, Jil Matheson, has a seat on the Location Council and we are keen to contribute to the objectives of the UK Location Strategy building on what we have already achieved. Providing information on maps is one dimension of our general strategy to release statistics free with no restrictions on their reuse as long as their source is acknowledged. Making statistics available in the right form helps people use them in their businesses and in policy making. As Carol pointed out this helps drives innovation and in turn feeds our information economy.

Some of the initiatives which we already have in place are:

the comprehensive Neighbourhood Statistics service which brings location based statistics together and presents them on maps

a key part of this is the provision of Census results on maps within a consistent national framework of output areas

the maintenance of standards and coding structures which enable the statistics to be linked together and compared over time. The geography naming and coding structure is currently being updated to create further standardisation and allow for future developments

We are constantly on the look out for further improvements and have launched a number of visualisation tools for statistics several of which are based on maps. A trail blazer was the Personal Inflation Calculator but a recent map based innovation is Commuter View which has many potential policy and planning applications - see http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/Info.do;jessionid=ac1f930b30d6d38cac13f40c45fdac7cb9808875f5fd?m=0&s=1266339572015&enc=1&page=analysisandguidance/analysisarticles/CommuterView.htm&nsjs=true&nsck=true&nssvg=false&nswid=985

Anyone interested in looking further into the fascinating world of such statistics should take a look at Neighbourhood Statistics at http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/

Graham Jenkinson 717 days ago

Agree that modern government must include use of all available data to make decisions and drive transformation activity. The DWP Customer Insight Team and HR Service Excellence are currently looking at how we can link all available data with employee engagement data from Staff survey and other relevant sources e.g. attendance to create efficient improvements to the customer experience. Customer feedback is a vital part of this approach - we are looking to develop an integrated picture. After all, great levels of engagement are worthless without great performance, satisfied customers and economic efficient services.    

The neighbourhood statistices site is a great tool for business unit managers and HR Business Partners to use in order to understand their community and tailor services accordingly.

Sue House, HR Service Excellence DWP  

Sue House 717 days ago

Total Place potentially represents the most radical change in public sector service delivery in a generation.  The initiative will survive the election since it attracts a wide political consensus. Given therefore the state of the public finances; the increasingly “Localist” policy agenda; and the potential for it to challenge the existing Whitehall delivery model, Total Place will have a significant impact on the government landscape.

Geography and GIS are fundamental to understanding place.  Many government organisations already employ GIS to deliver better services for the customer at less cost.  The challenge in terms of adopting a “whole area” approach is adopting geography as a common platform across many sectors and places.  For example, when trying to identify where spend can be reduced, local authorities, PCTs and other agencies can map out exactly what services already exist in each area and where there is a potential overlap. They can also see which areas are under-served, and take action.

Total Place also ties in with the Building Britain's Future agenda of building the next generation of public services, in which front-line delivery organisations collaborate effectively to deliver more user-focused services and individual entitlements.  However for this to become a reality do we need to be prepared to think in terms of a single public service workforce guided by location as a common denominator operating across the traditional organisational boundaries?

James Thompson, Local Government Strategist, ESRI (UK)

James Thompson 717 days ago

Some interesting observations on the value of location-based information and the merits in making the data that is collected more readily accessible. The work of the UK Location Programme and data.gov.uk provide mutual re-inforcement in this respect.

There are widespread opportunities for using location-based data to support, on the one hand, government or business applications to tackle large scale analytical tasks or challenging operational and emergency issues and, on the other hand, to support citizen and community based initiatives and applications with the opportunity for giving feedback and making government more responsive.

"Collect data once use many times" is an often quoted phrase but the opportunities to realise benefits from doing this have never before been so apparent or realisable. One can envisage areas such as biodiversity or waste where government information can be brought to bear to serve different research, operational, community or recreational applications.

But government needs to recognise the need to maintain quality in its data and consider where licensing and commercial considerations need to be included as part of the deal. It also needs to look at what citizens expect and take into account the preference for mobile applications such as those on the i-phone, Google maps and Google earth and the contributions they can make through social network and web 2.0 facilities.

Collaboration is the name of the game in all of this. The foundations are in place (pun intended). It will be very interesting to see how the government programmes in this area develop and, more importantly, the changes they facilitate in making improvments in government, the economy and society.

Ray Boguslawski 716 days ago

The Total Place initiative involves a different take on location based data. The pilots show that when services look at local information collaboratively they can spot the links between services, spot duplication and identify over and under-used services.  In short location based data, if used in this way, not only has the potential to save vast amounts of money but can give the customer what they want. 

Of course that data needs to be accurate, available and understood and the challenge for many areas will be in ensuring the data they collect and currently hold is of good quality. I hope that this momentum around local data goes further than simply recognising a need for data to be opened up and shared but that the sector uses it to look at services in a way that makes sense to the customer and the public purse.

Sir Michael Bichard 716 days ago

President Obama’s Chief Advisor on Science and Technology, Dr John Holdren has just presented on how location can underpin transparency and accountability in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Speaking in the plenary at the ESRI Government Conference in Washington DC he showed how GIS (Geographic Information Systems) can be used to map out the allocation of funding and grants on www.recovery.org enabling citizens to see how money is spent locally and what the effect on the local economy is. Other examples include how GIS is being used as a strategic management tool, for example in Maryland’s StateStat (www.statestat.maryland.gov ) – an area with not dissimilar challenges to many regions of the UK. This approach is clearly becoming international – take the District of North Vancouver’s GIS website as a further excellent example  - http://www.geoweb.dnv.org/. The question is how do we make this work in the UK...?

Keith Wishart 716 days ago

Carol’s question is a good one. Citizens are increasingly demanding data and services to help them understand their world, and how government is performing. At the same time, government is under increasing financial pressure and what are seen as additional demands are problematic. We need to be smart about identifying the benefits from this new agenda.

CLG is particularly keen to see more detailed public data made available about local areas and localities.  John Denham, our Secretary of State, has established a panel of experts, led by Professor Nigel Shadbolt from the University of Southampton. This Panel will champion the release of local public data, ensuring it can be linked effectively across local authorities, government departments and agencies – with a particular focus on integrating data from multiple sources, around the concept of place.You will shortly be able to follow the progress of the panel at data.gov.uk.

Carol is right to point out that we (the public sector) need to be publishing our data in a fully open, re-usable form.  There are already  very good examples of web developers and innovators re-using public data, particularly in a local context (school finder application is one good example).  Through our work with the Panel, we want to encourage and spread similarly innovative applications.  The key will be to publish our data in open, standard formats and – where are release geospatial data – ensuring that it can be mapped, or combined with related geographic information using standard terms and definitions for the associated places and localities

Geographical information has a significant role to play in meeting these aims. We agree that there is too little reuse, too much duplication of information: indeed, the PGA was originally created in 2002 to ensure that government had a consistent, high quality geographic base on which to base decisions and deliver services.

We all know that government creates and maintains large amounts of data which would be useful externally. However, it can still be difficult (even within government) to understand what data is available, and from where. We encourage all to collaborate, so minimising duplication and maximising the authoritativeness of data. How can government departments share data effectively and contribute to effective joint working? Should we identify key datasets and their definitive sources? This may result in changes to current processes and data specifications: Ordnance Survey may rely more on third parties in some areas, allowing them to revise the specification of data in other areas which currently do not meet customer needs.

Its fair to say there will be some costs to releasing data in a “raw” format – but data.gov.uk provides solutions which can minimise the overheads. Making data available may also reduce cost of building services. It is clear that where government is slow in creating applications which meet the public’s requirements, citizens have created their own – for example: fix my street (www.fixmystreet.com). And the public captures data that’s particularly important (or cannot afford to license). Open StreetMap (www.openstreetmap.org) provides royalty-free data, of surprisingly good quality in places.

 So there is a real demand for speedy, timely data and services which meet specific requirements. Government can’t hope to meet all needs, but by providing data, citizens can do it for themselves.

David Fry 716 days ago

GIS is becoming a framework for governments to share information with citizens, but more importantly it is also becoming a framework for governments to get information back from citizens.  As maps and GIS pervade society, governments increasingly use GIS as a platform to engage citizens, deliver transparency, and enhance policymaking. GIS supports integration of geospatial services, real-time data, user-generated content, mobile applications, and social networks to promote two-way open government practices that leaders and citizens expect.

When governments open up their data—not just their GIS data, but their data—using GIS as a framework, government becomes more transparent and more accessible, and citizens become more engaged.  Openly sharing government data in a geographic context can reveal telling patterns about public spending and lead to improved public services, for example.

Governments of all sizes at every level are already using geography as a framework for collaboration. In the United States, applications such as Recovery.gov, Maryland's StateStat, and Solar Boston show how GIS is a platform for Gov 2.0. These and other applications illustrate that we are entering a new era of government transparency and accountability.  I believe that using a geographic framework for making more transparent government policies is opening a new chapter of democracy, and both government and citizenry are the beneficiaries.

Jack Dangermond 714 days ago

Sue House, above, has already given the example of the DWP matching up staff feedback surveys and customer experience, but it would be good to hear about any other cases of the technology already being put to good use.

 

Where else are departments successfully using location data in their work? Also, where could they use it but aren't currently doing so; and why not?

Ruth Keeling 712 days ago

I very much welcome Carol Tullo’s enthusiastic presentation of the advantages to the citizen of making data available that allows information on services to be linked geographically. She will, of course, be aware that this is not a new argument, even though it bears frequent repetition. What is disappointing is that she has not dwelt on the impediments to what she proposes.

National gazetteer studies in the 1970s demonstrated the power of good geographical reference information. ICL, when they were the principal suppliers of computers to local government, offered a product called LAMIS, which would have allowed local authorities to implement a Total Place style of accounting to make them accountable to their citizens. In the mid 1980s Gurmukh Singh founded Pinpoint, a company that produced a predecessor product to AddressPoint with a one metre resolution map reference for every address. Once Pinpoint, and later AddressPoint data became available, together with digitised local authority and statistical boundaries, it became trivially easy to bring geographically referenced information together.

To take advantage, and research the possibilities of this situation, the ESRC established the Regional Research Laboratories initiative in 1986 and funded work on address referencing. I completed a PhD thesis entitled Social Information Systems – A Geographical Perspective, which dealt with the ways in which social services could be planned and monitored, in 1991.

In 1998 the Social Exclusion Unit was established and in 2000 Policy Action Team 18 published the report on “Better Information” which again emphasised the advantages of geographical linkage to monitor local services. It led to the establishment of the Neighbourhood Statistics Service at ONS, which does excellent work. But the PAT stopped short and failed to get the release of geographical referencing information necessary to enable citizens and others to do such linkage at a sufficiently local level to hold governments to account in a timely manner.

One of the most effective recent citizen led initiatives, which was free to use, was the Planning Alerts system which gave citizens around the country, and my constituents in Warrington, immediate access to the details of planning applications in the vicinity of their homes. In fact I was surprised and ashamed that the service provided was better than my own local authority provides. Unfortunately the demand of unaffordable licence payments by Royal Mail led to the service being closed down.

So why aren’t we joining up more information and why was the Planning Alerts system closed down? Carol knows the answer. As a nation, under the last two governments we have sacrificed the soul of joined up geography and citizen empowerment on the altar of cost recovery.

To achieve much of what Carol is encouraging us to get excited about all that citizens need is free access to the National Statistics Postcode Directory (preferably the more expensive version where postcodes are geocoded to 1metre resolution) and Ordnance Survey’s BoundaryLine product. A geo-referenced national address register would be a nice to have, but not essential if the NSPD and BoundaryLine were already available at no cost.

The iniquitous GridLock, sorry GridLink, initiative. A cartel compring RoyalMail, Ordnance Survey and ONS, which prevents access at reasonable cost to this essential geo-referencing material, needs to be dissolved and the data it controls made public.

It is very sad to see that following the Prime Minister’s announcement and Sir Tim Berners Lee and Nigel Shadbolt’s inspiring intervention, Royal Mail with the support of their minister, are dragging their feet over the release of postcode data. Government should not have given Royal Mail ownership of PAF, even “for the time being”. The time has come to return PAF to proper public control.

Liberating access to the NSPD and BoundaryLine from 1^st April is the only way to demonstrate that anyone is remotely serious about what Carol is enthusing about. Let’s see action NOW.

Robert Barr 711 days ago

The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has been using mapping as as part of its electronic Property Information Mapping Service (e-pims) prjoect (link attached http://www.ogc.gov.uk/estates_mandatory_requirements.asp) which allows OGC to help government departments to record information about all the properties central government bodies own, use, control, occupy or plan to occupy. and hence identify opportunities to share or relocate its estate.

I am interested in how this type of location mapping could possibly be used for Workforce planning, recording the numbers, by site, of all civil servants by grades, profession and age groups. This could assist processes like the current CSVacs system in managing surplus grades across government, retirement and other succession planning tools and then be used where to supplement where other departments may have skill shortages and may be using contingent labour to fill the gap. Trend analysis as to where skills shortages lie, could be fed into education programmes in areas that have unemployment problems and reduce governments reliance on Interims and Specilaist contractors. The NSG could use this sort of technology to develop Learning and Development programmes to meet this demand that would be transportable across the UK rather than reliance on travel to sites such as Sunningdale.

The applications for this type of mapping are potentially limitless and long overdue for departments to explore and I will look forward to any developments that transpire from this blog.  

Peter Groves 711 days ago

Just to support Peter Groves question above, could I ask (as a pretty ordinary and not especially well informed civil servant, but who has nonetheless used data analysis in the past to connect products to markets) what is being done with this data to inform strategies for workforce and social planning etc.

In my past, I had always to be mindful that I did not merely suffer what was commonly known as 'paralysis by analysis' by failing to recognisise the over-riding need to have vision, brand awareness, to manage risks 'on the hoof'  etc. in order to gain competitive edge rather than simply following a trend down the road. Something equivalent must surely apply in public services planning?

Michael ONeill 711 days ago

Peter and Michael - for example use of location information by the public sector you might want to look at the Central Government IGGI web site page on case studies: http://www.iggi.gov.uk/caseStudyOverview.php and, if you're on GSI, the Spatial Intelligence Network http://www.knowledgenetwork.gsi.gov.uk/spine/spinemain.nsf (Knowledge Network was down but hopefully a transitory problem).

Jonathan Rhind 711 days ago

A number of the applications from My Society & co, such as FixMyStreet http://www.fixmystreet.com/alert , etc have made heavy use of location data using GeoRSS feeds. Now some interesting applications are starting to appear using the location information from www.data.gov.uk - for example the ASBOrometer - http://www.asborometer.com/  - an iPhone application which gives measures of anti-social behaviour in local areas, ranks these across the country, etc.

We're keen to see what else the developers come up with, and to this end are holding a 'Justice & Home Affairs Rewired' event on 11th March so civil servants and the developers can start to work more closely together. Basically a group of developers have been invited to work on published datasets to see what innovative ways they can come up with for using our data, mashing this with other data available such as location information. They will then present their results to officials in the afternoon, where there will be an opportunity to discuss and exchange views.

Alison Cotterill 710 days ago

David Whyte writes that the “new frontier of leadership is relational, conversational, and ecological.” There is perhaps no greater tool for supporting this new type of relational - or what one might term “collaborative” – form of leadership, than GIS.  In the State of Maryland, GIS is allowing policymakers, law enforcement, and citizens alike not only to connect disparate data-points and datasets, but to advance a new collaboration between citizens and their government; connecting problems with opportunity, statewide efforts with those being undertaken at the local and federal levels, and perhaps even connecting this generation with the next.  Throughout the world, it’s being used to help rethink, redefine, and re-imagine the ways in we, as global citizens, are able to address our greatest social challenges, be they creating and protecting jobs, targeting, tracking, and holding accountable billions of federal recovery dollars in tough economic times, providing citizens with a deeper understanding of their government’s budget, keeping streets and neighborhoods safer, and protecting, restoring, and in some cases saving our natural resources. 

Governor Martin O'Malley 708 days ago

I enjoyed Bob Barr's precis on the licensing obstacles that are hampering universal use of the core admin boundary and postcode data.  He and Graham Jenkinson have both cited ONS’s successful Neighbourhood Statistics services (NeSS) - which provides a wealth of information for small areas in England Wales – as a good example where geography drives the application and holds it together. This was achieved by providing data providers to NeSS with the referencing data and tools they needed free; this meant that, whatever other reasons there may have been preventing supply of data (and some data could not be supplied for a small area as it would risk being disclosive), cost and restrictions on the use of the data were not among them.  ONS were able to provide this free supply due to quite unprecedented central government investment in the PAT18 vision Bob was instrumental in bringing about. The NeSS experience seems clear: if you provide a core definitive data source that requires universal uptake to achieve consistency and comparability, then making it free to use and easy to access really does work.

I think Bob was a bit harsh on Gridlink though! ONS a part of the Gridlink consortium to harmonise the various postcode products in the market place, e.g. OS’s Code-Point,  Royal Mail’s Postzon and ONS’s NSPD, so that the same currency of postcodes are assigned to the same core geographies using standard codes. This has undoubtedly transformed the comparability of applications using the different products. In line with its policy to free up its data, ONS does not charge for any of its IPR within NSPD. Any royalties collected on NSPD are on behalf of Royal Mail or OS, for postcodes 1m grid references respectively, and which ONS – in the sprit of providing free access to its data - would prefer not to have to collect.

For more information about the National Statistics postcode Directory see http://www.ons.gov.uk/about-statistics/geography/products/geog-products-postcode/nspd/index.html

Andy Tait 708 days ago

I am glad that my starter thoughts have sparked such a varied trail - and taken in the State of Maryland en route!  It shows how debate and discussion, like content, recognise no geographical boundaries and how from my London desktop I can converse with like minded pundits in this information space with ease.  This is so different to 12 years' ago when I started to work in government information managment and policy.  We now have an expert constituency that challenges constructively some of the historical constraints [real and pereived] to making things happen.  I have long been an advocate of not just explaining good practice but also of knowing what it is actually like to deliver the sewrvice and do it for real.  Only in that respect can we provide fully rounded advice that is grounded in listening to user feedback.  In the next month we anticipate a large tranche of data being released online to keep up the momentum.  It will not be a perfect solution for all no doubt, but as with this blog, it will have the advantage of airing and linking location data to a wider audience.

Carol Tullo 707 days ago

The Economist (27 February-5 March) has a 14 page special report on The Data Deluge. You can see the Leader article (25 February) trailing it on Economist.com, but the special report itself is only in print from at this stage. One of the eight articles in the report is entitled The Open Society (pages 10-11) and is devoted to "Governments letting in the light". It contrasts progress in the USA with here, saying the European Directive has no bite, and that Crown Copyright is an obstacle, referring specifically to OS and PAF, and the "loud complaints from businesses and activists", whilst acknowledging that "from later this year access to some parts of both data sets will be free thanks to an initiative the bring more government services online."

Michael Jennings 706 days ago

We at the British Geological Survey can certainly testify that opening up access to information for free on the web generates a great deal of interest! We were stunned by the scale of the reaction when we released our Digital Geological Map of Great Britain at the 1:50,000 scale (DiGMapGB-50) for free viewing on our new OpenGeoscience portal in December 2009 www.bgs.ac.uk/opengeoscience . The portal also includes the release of 50,000 high quality photos and provides access to a wide range of databases, educational resources, reports and even downloadable software (including the BGS digital mobile mapping package - SIGMAmobile), all delivered free for non-commercial, research, teaching and innovation uses. The launch of OpenGeoscience became one of the top 5 stories on BBC news online for the day and our own website was overwhelmed by the traffic generated (including a month’s web traffic in the first 4 hours).

One of the reasons we believe OpenGeoscience generated so much interest was because it made groundbreaking use of Web Map Services (running using ESRI's ArcGIS Server) to deliver  GIS-based maps in fully attributed format at the street level for the entire country (which we believe is a something of a world-first). The DiGMapGB-50 map itself is not just any dataset, it is one of our premier spatial datasets, so gives users access to multi-layered, high quality  geological mapping which is highly usable for mashing against other spatial datasets. One example we have seen already is Bracknell Caving Club’s use of it to plot cave locations against the geology http://www.bdcc.co.uk/mendip.html . Reaction in the wider masho-sphere continues to be very positive and we eagerly wait to see what users can now do with our information.

The university and schools educational sectors have also shown a strong interest in the information delivered via OpenGeoscience, demonstrating that there is a strong hunger out there for freely accessible spatial information for teaching.

The release of OpenGeoscience represents part of the BGS-NERC strategy (responding to the wider EU and UK information drivers) to free up access to large parts of our information for non-commercial uses (including teaching, research and innovation) in order to balance and complement the healthy partnership we already have with the business community based on commercial licensing of our premium datasets.

Keith Westhead 703 days ago

Many thanks to everyone who took part in this online roundtable. We had some great contributions which made it a real success.

The debate has been written up and published in this week's issue of Civil Service World - you can read it online here.

Ruth Keeling 663 days ago