UK Location Council stresses benefits of...

20 January 2010, 2:19pm

UK Location Council stresses benefits of ‘dynamic information landscape’ in first annual report

The growing importance of location information to frontline public services, the UK economy and the government’s digital engagement agenda is highlighted today.

The first annual report by the UK Location Council, the body implementing a four-year national strategy to maximise the value of geospatial datasets, charts innovative moves to put location at the heart of decision making.

The report, published at www.defra.gov.uk/location, shows how essential data is more easily accessed and shared through a common infrastructure of ‘core reference geographies’ and technology standards that include open source software where appropriate.

A local government example - increasing the take-up of council tax benefits in Dudley in the West Midlands - illustrates how location information can help to join up processes, patterns and data. Council officers have combined housing, electoral roll, council tax and socio-demographic data with unique location references to identify which areas and demographic groups to target.

A national collaboration on flood management provides another case study. The Atlantis Initiative, set up following the summer 2007 floods which cost tax-payers £3 billion, draws together interoperable data from different government departments to predict and mitigate future flooding. Sources include hydrographic, geological, weather, transport and topographic datasets.

In a further example of evidence-based policy making, the Places Database run by Communities and Local Government is enabling local strategic partnerships to develop their Local Area Agreements through analysis of integrated information from 12 central departments referenced by location. The database is also being used by third-sector organisations and businesses.

The report recognises that despite such early adopter case studies, the national strategy is required to ensure location information can be reused and integrated more easily for driving cost-effective business change and collaborative projects.

The Council says the “fundamentals have now been established to support the implementation of key elements of an infrastructure aimed at making it easier to discover, access and share location information, thus reducing costs and duplication”.

Huw Irranca-Davies, the Defra Minister responsible for the strategy, said it was necessary to widen access and “release the potential of location information.”

Writing in the foreword, he said: “Location information is increasingly being used to ensure emergency services arrive at incidents in time, to support the formulation of policies to mitigate the impact of climate change, to ensure that services are better targeted to citizens’ needs and to empower citizens and communities to manage their localities more effectively.

“But despite the wide range of beneficial applications of location information, the true value of this asset to the public, government and the private sectors is not being realised.”

In the report, the UK Location Council says it is taking forward its strategy within a “dynamic information landscape”. This includes changes to Public Sector Information policy and new technologies enabling greater digital engagement such as linked data under the Making Public Data Public initiative.

A web-based geoportal is being developed by the Council to allow data providers to publish their data and services and let users discover, view and evaluate location information.

The Council says it is critical that the programme demonstrates ‘end user’ value early on, to stimulate engagement and demand, to secure resources and to achieve an early return on investment.

To achieve this, the programme will incorporate early adopters and a series of end user application pilot projects this year, sponsored by stakeholder organisations, to gather evidence of benefits and best practice.

In highlighting the importance of location information, the Council points to the Prime Minister’s announcement in November 2009 that key Ordnance Survey data is a critical public asset which should be made more freely available, so unlocking social and economic activity and benefit.

The report also discusses the recent transposition into UK law of the EU INSPIRE Directive. This is designed to improve public access to location information supporting environmental policies such as monitoring the effects of climate change across national boundaries.

For more information : please contact the UK Location Programme team by e-mail at uklocationprogramme@defra.gsi.gov.uk or via Andy Bray, Communications Manager, UK Location Programme, 07903 674411.

www.defra.gov.uk/location

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