Housing Minister Iain Wright made the announcement of a new strategy for the Ordnance Survey aimed at enhanced ease of use and licensing of geodata.
Some things will remain the same:the Ordnance Survey will continue to be self-funded and earn revenue by licensing its data. But there are five areas that will change,though details of how are still unclear:
Promoting innovation –with an enhanced free service to allow experimentation with digital information and a clear path from this service to greater commercialisation;
Reforming Ordnance Survey’s licensing framework –so that it is much simpler to use Ordnance Survey data and services in other applications;
Reducing costs over time –to ensure that Ordnance Survey continues to offer value-for-money;
Supporting the sharing of information across the public sector –to enable better public policy and services;
* Creating an innovative trading entity –to explore further commercial opportunities around Ordnance Survey data and services.
The first thing the public will see is an updated OS OpenSpace (the free for non-commercial use API to OS data) May 12.