Ordnance Survey to be sold off

[ratfink]

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle5213218.ece

According to this article

A STRING of state-owned household names including the Met Office, mapmaker Ordnance Survey and the Forestry Commission, are being prepared for sale by the government in the next two years to raise cash for the stretched public purse.



will we have to have rubbish foreign maps??



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[dominion]

There's some stuff here about OS's battle with Google.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technolog...ogle_v_os.html

[ratfink]

Cheers Dominion, it looks like its more to do with allowing open access/use of the information that OS hold, than selling it off per se. here's the section in the pre-budget report

“4.54 Re-use of public sector information from trading funds

The HM Treasury/Shareholder Executive assessment of trading funds has considered the potential for innovation and growth from increasing commercial and other use of public sector information. It will shortly publish some key principles for the re-use of this information, consider how these currently apply in each of the trading funds and how they might apply in the future, and the role of the Office of Public Sector Information in ensuring that Government policy is fully reflected in practice.

For the Ordnance Survey, this will involve consideration of its underlying business model. Further details will be announced in Budget 2009.”

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63 miles, 30,000 feet, 24hours

[stumpy]

It's a growing trend for government run agencies and departments - most of the county council I work for is being outsourced to private business in the interests of efficiency savings - kinda ironic at the time when the government is nationalising those glowing examples of private business success - the banks!!!

[AndyA]

I thought OS had been sold off already, svereal years ago!

Shows what notice i take.

Looking at the maps on the shelf, they do say crown copyright on them so i guess it is still state owned.

Found this on the OS site;

We aim to satisfy the national interest and customer need for accurate and readily available geospatial data and maps for the whole of Great Britain in the most effective and efficient way (data and maps of Northern Ireland are provided by Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland). Ordnance Survey and its partners seek to be the content provider of choice for location based information in the new information economy by:

Collect, portray and distribute the definitive record of the natural, built and planned environment of Great Britain, meeting customer need and the national interest in the most effective manner.
Ordnance Survey is required by the Ordnance Survey Trading Fund Order 1999 (SI 99/965) to recover all of the costs of collecting, maintaining and disseminating data to users, together with funds for investments and to meet financial obligations to HM Treasury.

All Ordnance Survey material is subject to Crown Copyright. Ordnance Survey earns revenue to meet its financial obligations by licensing Intellectual Property Rights in its data, maps and information, under Crown Copyright (and Database right and trade marks) through delegated authority from the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, which is part of the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI).

That'll all go out of the window when Richard Branson buys it!

[Penguin]

nah, me gona put an offer in for em, but my drawing and navigation skills are crap! so updating them will be a thing of the past

[DanAzz]

so updating them will be a thing of the past

I was under the (possibly wrong impression) that they weren't updating them any more anyway.
I know they re-issued after the CROW act but I am not sure they are re-surveying anymore.

[Rudolph Hooker]

Don't Memory Map effectively own OS already? They've been selling UK map data back to the tax payers of the nation that already owns it for years.

[Darth domain]

doesn't matter, harvey maps are better anyhow

[The Piglit]

It's all part of the New Labour creeping sleeping revolution. End game? A one party state where we get the worst of socialism with the worst of the free market.
I work for a large govt dept (sorry) which is referred to as "the business"
Hopeless
One thing for sure.........the maps will get more expensive