May 2013
4 posts
4 tags
Green Belt Boundaries for England - Still Not Open...
Some of us with an interest in open data were quite excited when, in late November of last year, the Telegraph not only published the first detailed web-based map of the Green Belt in England, but also made the full underlying dataset (a shapefile obtained from the Department for Communities and Local Government) available for download.
According to the Telegraph article:
This map is the first...
2 tags
UK Open Data: An Institutional Timeline
I’ve started a spreadsheet in Google Docs as an attempt to track on an ongoing basis all of the officially recognised and active boards, panels and advisory groups that meet to discuss and implement UK transparency and open data policy.
The spreadsheet includes a timeline from the 2010 General Election to present, with links to any published minutes.
A few of the groups (e.g. the Local...
2 tags
Full responses to the draft Code of Practice...
Several months ago the Cabinet Office ran a public consultation on a draft Code of Practice (Datasets) to help public authorities implement some upcoming changes to the Freedom of Information Act.
Those changes will require public authorities to provide datasets requested under FOI in a re-usable format and with a licence for re-use, where reasonably practicable. The draft Code itself and the...
April 2013
2 posts
6 tags
Land Registry to release Price Paid Data under...
Yesterday Land Registry announced that additional Price Paid Data will be released later this year under the Open Government Licence. Price Paid Data is a dataset containing records of the sale price for every residential property sold at full market value in England and Wales from 1995 onwards.
Price Paid Data for registrations between 1 January 2009 and 31 January 2012 will be released on 28...
5 tags
Maggie Thatcher is unpopular in Liverpool
This is a map of people who signed a petition yesterday against a state funeral for Margaret Thatcher:
22,659 people signed the petition yesterday. This map is based on the postcode districts of 22,585 of those responses. (74 responses gave invalid postcode information and are excluded).
I have applied a standard deviation. Red dots indicate the centroids of postcode districts with 23 or more...
4 tags
Shakespeare Review into Public Sector Information:...
In June 2012 the UK Government announced that Stephan Shakespeare, Chair of the Data Strategy Board, would lead an independent review of public sector information. Terms of reference and additional information are available on the Gov.uk website.
Market research firm YouGov has recently conducted a survey regarding open data, in support of the PSI Review. (Stephan Shakespeare is CEO of YouGov.)...
March 2013
2 posts
9 tags
Royal Mail cancels Pinpoint positional data...
Update Apr 23: cancellation of Pinpoint has now also been confirmed on the Royal Mail website.
According to a post on the Allies Computing website, Royal Mail have confirmed they will not proceed with their controversial Pinpoint positional data capture project.
Andrea Martin, Managing Director of Data Services for Royal Mail, is quoted:
“Royal Mail announced in the summer of 2012 a...
9 tags
Ofcom’s Postcode Address File consultation -...
(Internal review response now received - see update below.)
A brief update on my post of last month, re the key figures redacted from Ofcom’s Postcode Address File consultation:
Royal Mail has also rejected my Freedom of Information request for the PAF cost stack figures, on the basis that they are commercially sensitive. RM maintains that on balance “the public interest in...
February 2013
2 posts
5 tags
Free school applications - Department for...
Following is a list of Freedom of Information responses in respect of free school applications, published today on the Department for Education website:
Name, local authority, previous school name and faith designation of applications to open a Free School - wave 3 (Date requested: 06 July 2012)
Name, Local Authority, Previous school name, and Faith designation of applications to open a Free...
8 tags
Ofcom's Postcode Address File consultation - key...
Ofcom has refused my FOI request (submitted in a tweet!) for an unredacted copy of the Postcode Address File consultation document, citing exemptions under Sections 43 and 44 of the Freedom of Information Act.
Section 43 exempts information from disclosure if it would prejudice commercial interests, and Section 44 enables Ofcom to rely on the general restriction on disclosure of information set...
January 2013
2 posts
7 tags
Open Data or Not? A hard look at the Scottish Data...
Data licensing can be tricky.
There are data sets that are clearly open data and data sets that are clearly not.
Then there are those that have potential, if you look at them in the proper light …
The Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) are a multi-domain measure of relative levels of deprivation within small geographic areas of the UK.
Indices for England, Scotland, Wales and...
2 tags
Draft Code of Practice (Datasets): Comments
The UK Ministry of Justice has drafted a Code of Practice (Datasets) to help public authorities implement changes to the Freedom of Information Act expected to take effect in April. These changes, introduced via the Protection of Freedoms Act, require public authorities to provide datasets in a re-usable format and with a licence for re-use, where reasonably practicable.
I wrote about these...
December 2012
1 post
3 tags
Open Data User Group initial recommendations to...
The UK’s Data Strategy Board has released minutes of a meeting held on 28 November. These minutes provide a first look at the list of datasets identified by the Open Data User Group as good potential candidates for open data release.
The Open Data User Group (ODUG) is a sub-committee of the DSB made up of volunteers, from a range of sectors and backgrounds but all with an interest in UK...
November 2012
1 post
4 tags
Scottish Parliament MSP Allowances: 2011-2012 Bulk...
Update Dec 4: Please see the end of the post. I have corrected errors affecting a couple of hundred rows in the 2011-2012 data and released a revised csv. Additionally I’ve released a csv containing the bulk data for the 2010-2011 financial year.
On Tuesday the Scottish Parliament released the latest figures for MSPs’ allowances and expenses. Totals by category were included in a...
September 2012
2 posts
2 tags
Ten awesome open data resources (missing from...
Looking for UK open data? You probably know all about Data.gov.uk, the UK Government’s main portal for public data. Data.gov.uk lists more than 8,600 public data sets, most of them re-usable under the Open Government Licence.
Depending on your area of interest, you might also want to trawl through a more specialised data hub like the National Statistics website, the Department for Transport...
4 tags
Whatever happened to Information Asset Registers?
One of the challenges of trying to unlock public data for re-use is actually identifying data sets held by Government departments and agencies.
Whatever your area of interest, you have to know the data exists before you can argue for its release.
So what we need in the UK is a comprehensive inventory of structured data assets held by the public sector. Obviously.
Data.gov.uk website should...
August 2012
1 post
7 tags
Public Rights of Way in England and Wales: more...
Why is there no open national map of Public Rights of Way in England and Wales? Or to put the question another way, why isn’t the information that local councils maintain on Public Rights of Way freely available for re-use?
This post is specifically about open data release of vector mapping data for Public Rights of Way (PRoW) maintained by local surveying authorities. The statutory basis...
July 2012
1 post
6 tags
Areas for improvement in available flood data for...
This morning the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change, an expert body that advises on the UK Government’s programme for adaptation to climate change, published a report to Parliament on the state of preparedness in England and Wales for two of the largest climate risks, flooding and water scarcity (or drought).
This is probably the best report I’ve read on UK...
June 2012
1 post
6 tags
Freedom of Information and Charging for Public...
Prior to yesterday’s release of the Cabinet Office’s Open Data White Paper there was speculation, mainly in an article first published Wednesday evening on the Guardian website, that the UK Government would also use this occasion to announce a review of charging for information requested under the Freedom of Information Act.
It’s unclear whether the Guardian’s original...
May 2012
2 posts
9 tags
Further information on Royal Mail's Positional...
Subsequent to my post in March, a few additional details have emerged on Royal Mail’s Positional Data Capture project. The objective of this project is to collect location information for all Royal Mail delivery address points in the UK.
Last week a Communication Workers Union (CWU) representative posted a Deployment Guidelines document on the RoyalMailChat online message board. (Free...
3 tags
Inventory of Closed Mining Waste Facilities on a...
Today the Environment Agency published a report summarising the results of an inventory of closed and abandoned mining waste facilities that are causing serious environmental impacts or have the potential to cause such an impact, in England and Wales.
I’ve made this map of the 148 sites in the inventory, based on data in a table in the report:
http://www.owenboswarva.com/mwd/
The...
March 2012
5 posts
5 tags
Land Registry Price Paid information on a map
I’ve made a basic tool to display and browse the Land Registry’s Price Paid information for February 2012 on a map, and put it on my website here:
http://www.owenboswarva.com/ppi/
As mentioned in previous posts, Land Registry maintains a dataset of more than 17 million residential property transfers in England and Wales going back to 1995. From last week Land Registry is releasing...
4 tags
Land Registry releases one month of Price Paid...
The Land Registry has today published its latest Price Paid information on residential property sales in England and Wales. For the first time this data has been released under the Open Government Licence, as ‘open data’. This means it can be re-used by the public and third-party developers both for personal and commercial purposes.
Unfortunately this open data release contains only...
4 tags
On the importance of promoting open data to local...
This week Guardian Professional interviewed Nigel Shadbolt on the importance of including local government in the open data revolution. Below are some comments that I added:
Opening up public data held by councils is important, of course, particularly as more and more responsibilities are being devolved to the local level. We are already seeing some examples of good practice by individual...
9 tags
Royal Mail's Positional Data Capture project:...
Is Royal Mail developing its own geo-referenced national address data set, to compete with National Address Gazetteer products such as Ordnance Survey’s AddressBase?
Following is an item from a recent e-bulletin for members of the Communications Workers Union (CWU):
Positional Data Capture Update
Royal Mail want to develop a new product called Positional Data Capture (PDC). This involves...
5 tags
Descoped: Land Registry to release only tiny...
When the Cabinet Office announced back in November, as one of the Open Data measures in the Autumn Statement, that
from 1 March 2012 Land Registry will make available “Price Paid information” showing all residential property sales in England and Wales at address level
what do you suppose it meant by that?
It seemed simple enough. By law all residential property sales are lodged with...
February 2012
1 post
5 tags
FOIA and the Protection of Freedoms Bill: An...
The Protection of Freedoms Bill is a wide-ranging piece of UK legislation currently at the report stage in the House of Lords.
This post is about Clause 102, a small and unassuming part of the Bill that tinkers with the Freedom of Information Act in order to make it easier for the public to access and re-use datasets held by government bodies. Or at least that’s the idea.
I start from the...
January 2012
7 posts
Public-Private Partnership Policing in the UK
This weekend’s report that Richard Branson’s Virgin Media “secretly” agreed to pay the Met Police’s overtime bill for investigation of a television set-top box scam prompted a number of outraged comments about private policing.
Jenny Jones, Green Party candidate for London mayor and a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority for 12 year until its abolition this...
The ABI's Bold New Paradigm for Flood Insurance: A...
So yesterday Otto Thoresen, the new Director General of the Association of British Insurers (ABI), gave a speech at the Insurance Institute of London in which he set out five key priorities for UK insurers in 2012.
First on the list was flooding, “the biggest catastrophic risk facing the UK”.
This is what Mr Thoresen said, based on the prepared version of his speech:
Our current...
4 tags
Reservoir Inundation Maps: National Security vs...
Yesterday the British Dam Society held an evening meeting on Reservoir Risk Classification. The BDS is a member organisation mainly for engineers who inspect or work on dams and reservoirs, but to their great credit they stream their meetings online and provide open access to non-members.
The meeting was based around two lectures with a Q&A at the end. Tim Hill from Mott MacDonald spoke first...
6 tags
Flood Insurance and the Housing Market Apocalypse
Another week, another alarming pronouncement on flood insurability from the property search industry. This week SearchFlow have managed to place their “calculations” in the Mortgage Introducer, the Independent, and the Insurance Times (who should really know better).
According to SearchFlow a quarter of all UK properties could be unable to obtain insurance against flooding, once the...
3 tags
Green Belt Boundaries for England - Open or Closed...
Alasdair Rae (@undertheraedar), a lecturer at the University of Sheffield, has questioned why spatial data for England’s Green Belt is not available as “open data”.
Mr Rae has obtained Green Belt data from the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) for research purposes. However to re-use that data more publicly he would have to license it on commercial terms from...
6 tags
Postcodes in Polygon: A Thing I Made
Last week Simon Whitehouse at Digital Birmingham wondered aloud whether anybody had used the Ordnance Survey’s Code-Point Open postcode data to create a mapping tool where a user could draw a polygon and produce a list of all the postcodes in that polygon.
I was inspired by Simon’s post to have a go at this problem, building on some previous work I’d done with the Google Maps...
3 tags
Hullo and Welcome
This is a fresh blog I’ve set up in Tumblr as a place to put short, informal posts on a range of subjects.
At the moment my main interests are geographic risk, flood policy, mapping technology, data research and analysis, and information policy. I’m based in the United Kingdom.
I also tweet at @owenboswarva and @correlatedrisk, and write the occasional longer article on emerging...
