Communities and Local Government has formally launched a consultation on which Ordnance Survey datasets can be made freely available as part of moves to make publicly-held information more accessible.
Communities minister John Denham said: “The Government is setting out here what it sees as the strategic options for Ordnance Survey to support Making Public Data Public and enable a thriving private sector market as well as sustainable provision in the public sector. We are minded to make available for free and without restriction on re-use certain Ordnance Survey datasets and we invite comments on any aspect of this report.”
The possible range of products under consideration for release as part of this initiative includes:
* ‘Raster’ products in a range of scales from 1:10,000 to 1:1 000 000 that will enable developers to produce an application that overlays their information on a map and to zoom in from a national view down to the street level.
* definitive gazetteer, boundary and postcode information that will enable widespread use of these commonly used geographies and act as a link between other Government data sets which reference the same geography.
* small-scale vector mapping products which would enable developers to link between boundary, postcode and mapping data.
