Corporate report

Geospatial Commission: Board of Commissioners meeting 30 April 2024

Published 7 October 2024

Geospatial Commission Board of Commissioners’ Meeting 30
30 April 2024, Welsh Government

Attendees

Commissioners:

Bernard Silverman (Chair)
Sarah Hodgetts
Louise Heathwaite
Steve Unger
Alex Notay
Gabriel Straub

Nominated Commissioners:

Nick Bolton
David Tomaney

Commission Unit:

Catherine Carter-McGrath
Jamie Clark
Chris Chambers, (virtually)
Ben Carson
(Minutes by: Angela Shannon)

Standing Observers:

Glyn Jones (Wales)
Suzanne McLaughlin (Northern Ireland, online)

Apologies: Alan Corbett (Scotland)

Actions:

Action	Owner	Deadline
1. Strategy session to be arranged with Commissioners to aid in refining our strategic delivery framework.	Angela Shannon/Ben Carson	28/06/2024
2.Ben Carson to iterate the annual plan and send round to the board for comments to ensure it has smarter objectives and the strategy includes interoperability.	Ben Carson	14/07/24
3.Update the Land Use risk with the necessary detail and suggested engagement with the Devolved Administrations to mitigate the risk and provide the board with the necessary reassurance.	Catherine McGrath	17/05/24

1. Welcome, Minutes and Matters Arising

1.1.The Chair welcomed both the attendees in the room and online. Apologies were received from Alan Corbett. Minutes from January Board Meeting were approved with no further comments.

1.2.The Chair asked that any further comments beyond those already added to the below the line papers, to be shared with the board following the meeting.

2. Report from the Nominated Commissioners

2.1.Nick Bolton confirmed the Geo 6 group had met prior to the board and a report had been shared from this meeting. The Geo6 said the relationship with the GC is travelling in a much better and joined up direction of late and there was a lot of positivity about that. The board agreed and said it was fantastic to hear.

2.2.The Nominated Commissioners had no specific comments on the board papers that were not picked up under the general discussion.

3. Devolved Administration Update

3.1.Suzanne McLaughlin (NI Government) provided an update on the work NI are currently undertaking. NI are working on a strategic business case with their valuation colleagues in Land & Property Services to advise on the geospatial input to the specification for their new valuation system that will be going out to procurement later this year.

3.2.They have also been working with the Electoral Office to add the new Parliamentary Constituencies to their polling station application to inform decision making on the assignment of polling location and maps for the upcoming elections.

3.3.The impacts of flooding and climate change on buildings and protected national monument is also a further area of work NI are looking at and have been working with the Historic Environment Division to analyse the effects of this.

4. Report from the Director of the Commission

4.1.Sarah Hodgetts (SH) delivered a progress update on the GC strategy and the Delivery Report paper.

4.2.SH said there are several commitments that are still outstanding that we are working through. This portfolio dashboard shows the current work in meeting those remaining commitments, whilst later papers considered today, think towards the GC’s future direction and what any potential future commitments should move towards.

a.Since the last meeting, the team has continued to work on all the programmes listed in the report, with most sitting at a green rating.

b.PMD is flagged as amber-red primarily due to time limits on the funding. The significant progress on reaching agreement with ONS and the ITT evaluations for a consultant go a long way to addressing this decline in the delivery confidence since the last meeting. The team is working exceptionally hard to inject the necessary pace and momentum and things are starting to come together that should allow us to accelerate the delivery in the coming weeks and months.

c.The international summit was the most public deliverable since the last meeting. Feedback from delegates has been overwhelmingly positive from both delegates and exhibitors alike. Both Ministers were extremely pleased. The international team is working through all the views collated on the second day and compiling a report; working with OS to feed the findings into the global considerations. The board discussed the value of the International Summit and Ben Carson updated on the three workshop areas held on sea level rise, food security and natural disasters; aiming to identify how new technology could be used in these spaces. The board agreed the networking between countries and academics are key and that the summit brought people together to start conversations in these areas.

d.The board thanked all those involved in making the International Conference a success.

e.SH informed the board that her and some of the GC team are attending Rotterdam wc:13th of May and that she will share feedback on this visit.

f.SH thanked Bernard for his comments on the Delivery pack prior to the meeting and confirmed the team will add the trend arrows back in for the next iteration of this deck.

g.SH updated on the programmes that had changed since the last meeting. PMD, as already mentioned has dropped from Amber-to-Amber Red. We are on track and making good progress against workstream 3, but it has been incredibly resource and time intensive procuring the O2 data and running the procurement for a supplier. The decline in status here is a wish to reflect that timing pressure, alongside ongoing recruitment challenges into that team, and the urgent need to accelerate the other 3 work streams. This is reflected in the risk on slide 19 in relation to workstream dependencies. The team has mitigations in place for all of these and is driving forwards as rapidly as possible.

h.Land Use has improved from Amber/Green to Green since the last meeting. There is growing interest and support across government with the next steering group taking place in May, and the report by Turing is in the final iteration prior to sign off. We are now at the point of considering our next moves ahead and the shape of the taskforce to support a future funding bid.

i.The summit has also moved from Amber Green to green since the February meeting, largely because it has been successfully delivered.

j.Sarah updated the board on GC resources and said there have been around 20 new starters joining in the last 6 months in addition to several maternity/paternity returners due back between May and July. SH also confirmed she is ready to sign off on filling the vacant Deputy Director post and will continue to keep the board updated on this.

k.The board asked for reassurance around the Land Use risk and suggested engagement with the devolved. Action- Catherine will update the risk to provide the necessary detail and mitigation.

l.No further comments on risks and Issues.

5. Future Direction of the GC including Annual Plan

5.1.Ben Carson (BC) presented the paper on Future Direction of the GC and said when writing the annual plan, it is helpful to have a context of what we are thinking so this can help with planning.

5.2.BC said the plan focused on four strategic directions; data, access, use cases and championing economic data. Conversations are happening with partner bodies with a need to build better links with operational parts of the world to assist us with this and use it in a way to support governance collectively. We should know what project is linked to which strategic outcome. BC said a Charter and Framework is being drafted so we can bring strategic direction to the board. The board can then review and critique; holding GC to account appropriately.

5.3.The board discussed having smarter objectives/aims as a board which will enable us to replicate and deliver value stories. The board agreed the core of this is understanding what we do, considering what the benefits case is and why we can deliver those benefits, unifying vision in government with a collective purchasing piece. SH agreed that the current objectives are loose but are 3-5 years’ work and part of this is what we are doing in government with duplication and double licencing increasing interoperability.

5.4.The board agreed that communication is key in ensuring people are aware of the services we already have before building new products.

5.5.Action- Strategy session to be arranged with Commissioners to aid in refining our strategic delivery framework- Angela Shannon/Ben Carson.

5.6.Action- Ben Carson to iterate the annual plan and send round to the board for comments to ensure it has smarter objectives and the strategy includes interoperability.

6. Stakeholder Mapping and Engagement Strategy

6.1.Jamie Clark (JC) presented the paper on Stakeholder mapping and engagement strategy. The paper was in response to an action at the last board meeting, requesting a stakeholder map. JC said the stakeholder maps and processes were reviewed, aggregated, and grouped. This piece of work has identified a group of stakeholders we have never engaged with. We have therefore restructured the team and standardised the comms and engagement team with a focus initially on the international and domestic side and the top 10 UK eco system. The task going forward will be for the comms team to task project teams to know who their audience is before a project commences.

6.2.The board agreed that this was a great piece of work and is a real step change to how the commission works. Several suggestions were made by board members in relation to the use of concentric circles to represent the information as well as a question as to who are out strategic partners that sit across many projects and who are the ones the core team need to concentrate on.

6.3.The board also suggested considering some critical groups that may not sit in the Geo circle and for private sector organisations where geo is a subset; how can we include these. There was also a suggestion about the NHS and building relationships in that space.

7. Geospatial Priorities- Wales

7.1.Bernard thanked Glyn and Dave for being great hosts of the board meeting and for their hospitality.

7.2.Dave Roberts (DR) presented the Welsh Geospatial priorities and outlined the success in Geospatial teams and digital & data teams and highlighted where more improvements can be made in Business, Citizen, and Policy teams.

7.3.DR touched on Wales’s’ priorities and said one of these was building an interface in Data Map Wales to link further with citizens and talked about how they are supporting Welsh government with Welsh language mapping and the increasing of education in this area. A further one is the innovation taking place using AI in woodland areas and work starting with the Research and Innovation Engagement Group (RISE) which uses information from companies’ house.

7.4.DR said in all the work taking place, public sector collaboration is essential in delivering the Geospatial priorities and improving Citizen engagement to improve the data.

8. UK Hydrographic Office – Forward look & SR Approach

8.1.David Tomaney (DT) presented the UK Hydrographic Office forward look and SR approach.

8.2.Hydrography is the branch of applied sciences which deals with the measurement and description of the physical features of oceans, seas, coastal areas, lakes, and rivers, as well as with the prediction of their change over time, for the primary purpose of safety of navigation and in support of all other marine activities, including economic development, security and defence, scientific research, and environmental protection (IHO).

8.3.DT talked through the vision, purpose, and task as well as the UKHO’s vision to 2024. The UK has the fifth largest footprint of any country, providing about a third of global digital coverage by area. Globally, 90% of internationally trading vessels carry UKHO products to enable regulated safe navigation. UKHO is a critical delivery agency supporting Defence’s 4 priorities; protect, pursue, promote, and secure.

8.4.The UKHO are transforming their production capability to avoid building point solutions and are restructuring their data in such a way that will enable them to answer customer questions at pace. They are building for pace, scale and flexibility, building capability to meet customer use cases.

8.5.DT said that being part of the board has transformed relationships with BGS and OS.

9. Any Other Business

9.1.Sarah Hodgetts (SH) thanked Bernard for his time as the Geospatial Commissions board Chair.

9.2.Bernard thanked the board and staff for everything whilst Chairing the Geospatial Commission Board of Commissioners.

9.3.The next Board meeting will take place in Northern Ireland on Wednesday 24th July 2024.