Geospatial Commission: Board of Commissioners meeting 14 November 2019
Published 23 January 2020
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Geospatial Commission: Board of Commissioners meeting 14 November 2019
10:00 - 14:30
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 1 Birdcage Walk, London, SW1H 9JJ
Commissioners
Sir Andrew Dilnot (Chair)
Nigel Clifford (Deputy Chair)
Thalia Baldwin
Steve Blair
Kru Desai
Edwina Dunn OBE
Michael Mire
Steve Unger
Commission unit
Ellen Bentley
Sarah Brown (for item 2)
Joe Cuddeford
Rosalind Goodfellow
Tim Howard (for item 4)
Owen Jackson
Hugh Phillips (for item 3)
Heath Pritchard (for item 3)
Catherine Young
Observers
Roger Halliday (Scottish Government)
Glyn Jones (Welsh Government)
Jim Lennon (Northern Irish Government)
Apologies
Dame Kate Barker
1. Minutes and matters arising
Apologies were received from Dame Kate Barker.
The minutes of the previous meeting were reviewed and approved for publication.
Steve Blair and Michael Mire provided a report from the Partner Bodies, in their capacity as Nominated Commissioners. It was agreed that insights from Partner Bodies would be shared throughout the discussions as they became relevant.
Thalia Baldwin provided a report from the Geospatial Commission Unit, in her capacity as Director.
2. Innovation and adoption: proposed interventions
Owen Jackson reflected on the Board’s previous discussion regarding the Commission’s role in promoting geospatial innovation, and introduced a range of possible interventions the Commission could pursue.
The Board discussed how the Commission could most effectively stimulate innovation linked to geospatial data.
It was agreed that the Commission should ensure it not only serves the specialist geospatial community effectively, but works to bring in a wider community of innovators pursuing use cases and solutions across the tech and data space.
Arguably, the greatest value to be realised lies in the integration and joining of datasets. A data ‘sandbox’ could allow for the joining of datasets (both public and private), whilst allowing the privacy and personal data issues that can result from data sharing and integration to be tested in a safe environment. This has been done in other areas of data innovation.
There is a role for the Commission to facilitate a connection between key public sector policy challenges and geospatial innovators. Engaging with wider public sector challenges could create a more sustainable setting for geospatial innovation into the future.
Further public-private sector collaboration around geospatial data could be built through the creation of data sandboxes or through further investment in innovation hubs. This opportunity extends beyond the Commission, to the wider network of Partner Bodies and data hubs.
The Commission Unit will now consider the feasibility and benefits of specific interventions, and will work to ensure appropriate structures and governance are in place to engage stakeholders across government.
3. Data: exploring rationale for change and intervention
Ros Goodfellow provided an update on the Commission’s developing policy thinking around data access and improvement. The Commission’s work in this area has been organised around three key objectives:
*to drive better and wider use of national public sector geospatial data;
*to develop principles and standards in the management of local geospatial data; and
*to remove the barriers that inhibit greater sharing and wider use of geospatial data held by the private sector.
The Board reflected on how the Commission could most effectively unlock economic and social value through precise interventions around geospatial datasets.
The Commission’s responsibility regarding data quality should be to establish a culture of sustainable and reliable standards, rather than having a role to ‘clean up’ individual datasets. If interventions are made to clean up individual datasets, these must be driven by clear user-focused use cases that demonstrate an opportunity to unlock significant economic or social value.
Considerations regarding the funding structures for geospatial data include the relation between the cost of collection, costs of ongoing maintenance, and the innovation potential should transaction costs be eliminated. Almost all data has costs associated with its production, but making some datasets free at the point of use could unlock significant value.
The Commission should remain aware of the insights enabled by geospatial data and continue its engagement with data ethics and privacy bodies including the Centre for Data Ethics & Innovation and the Information Commissioner’s Office.
The Commission’s priority to make datasets accessible, interoperable and reliable can best be realised through demonstrable data quality assurance and functional infrastructure, including portals and APIs. There can be great value in single platform systems, such as Singapore’s ‘OneMap’, which on a small, local scale could demonstrate the power of geospatial data. However, there are alternate models that dissociate data from a single data hosting and management environment.
There are questions around data ownership, data rights, public interest and competition law to be considered in regards to geospatial data held by the private sector, now and in the future.
The Commission will continue to develop its thinking, drawing insight from its investments in foundation data projects and underground asset register pilots, and its study of the geospatial market, as well as from engagement with holders and users of geospatial data across government.
4. UK National Strategy: progress update
Tim Howard presented a paper proposing a draft structure and overview of contents for the Commission’s National Geospatial Strategy document.
It was agreed that the Strategy must balance informed thinking with clear case studies and tangible, actionable commitments.
The Strategy will reflect in its content the broad community of those interested in geospatial data, acknowledging the range of scales, from local councils to international bodies, expertise and use cases.
5. Any other business
There was no other business. The next meeting of the Board of Commissioners will take place on Thursday 12 December 2019.