The PSGA provides a new framework to define and govern delivery of the Ordnance Survey’s (OS) public task in a manner that reflects the requirements of the public sector user base and Government’s requirements of Ordnance Survey as the national mapping organisation.
The new Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA) changes the way in which the public and private sector accesses the UK Government owned geospatial data of which OS is the custodian. The PSGA includes:
— provision of access to approximately 70 new data sets, over the first 3 years, that were identified through the user engagement exercises undertaken with the public and private sectors to further support their delivery of effective and efficient public services;
— delivery of key identifiers including the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) and the Unique Street Reference Number (USRN) under an Open Government Licence;
— a transition towards the release of individual building blocks of data allowing users to access and use the data they really need without having to take, manage and store excess data that comes with the fixed products;
— provision of entry-level data delivery Application Programming Interface (APIs) that are intended to reduce the data management burden. These will provide the whole of the public sector with the basic level of access to the data with the intention to reduce the data management burden on those public sector bodies who have limited or no resources to use the data. They are not designed nor intended to meet the needs of large or sophisticated API users or those requirements for value added services across the public sector;
— changes to licensing terms including the definition of ‘derived data’ and a broadening of terms of presumption to publish will mean more data derived from OS base data will be able to be published in relation to property extents;
— provision of support and services that OS already provides to the Government including technical support to aid adoption, maps into education, UK representation in international geospatial standards, and mapping for emergencies in its role as the National Mapping Agency including additional contract management process for the delivery of such services;
— improved user access to the data for the public sector and solution providers through four new APIs providing basic access to certain OS datasets for free up to a threshold, including OS’s flagship MasterMap Topography layer;
— freeing up some licensing conditions so third parties can make more of their data available under open terms for others to use in their products and services.