I am not entirely convinced by the data utility argument which I support in my answer to question 1, however, there is nothing that gets my ire up more than when people limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion with hand wavy arguments (Section 4.17). Not to mention the hypocrisy of doing so whilst at the same time suffixing each question with “Please provide evidence to support your answer where possible.”

Charging for Public Data Corporation information

1. How do you think Government should best balance its objectives around increasing access to data and providing more freely available data for re-use year on year within the constraints of affordability? Please provide evidence to support your answer where possible.

The Government and its organisations should provide services for society, the assumption that the “constituent parts” targeted for absorption into the PDC should act as businesses, requiring “sustainable business model[s]” is a subversion of their place and role in society. To go further down that route rather than retreat from it is a mistake.

The remit of the constituent parts should be restricted to providing the services necessary for the country to operate effectively, and such services should be funded from the budgets of the organs of Government that use them (ultimately the tax payer). Those service should then be provided at marginal cost to any non-Governmental users. Although there is an obvious advantage to the tax payer in having the services subsidised by non-Governmental users such a funding device is regressive, in that it restricts the services to those who can afford the charges. Outstanding issues of affordability should be reconsidered in terms of the net benefit to Society of those services being made available.

The consultation describes this position as the “‘data utility’ pricing model” (S. 4.17) and without evidence or discussion deems it “currently unaffordable” and therefore not for discussion. Further it spuriously argues that a “lack of investment” would result in degraded quality and accessibility of the data, despite said level investment being entirely at the Government’s discretion, and the remit for the production of value-added services also being at its discretion. By discounting a model which they acknowledge without more detailed consideration the authors make their bias clear.

2. Are there particular datasets or information that you believe would create particular economic or social benefits if they were available free for use and re-use? Who would these benefit and how? Please provide evidence to support your answer where possible.

The 2008 “Models of Public Sector Information Provision via Trading Funds” report by Newbery, Bently and Pollock commissioned by the last Government found that changing two OS product categories to a marginal cost regime would result in a net benefit to Society of £168m, for a cost to Government of £30m. Because of the lack of category breakdowns provided to the authors of the report, it is not possible to analyse which of the specific products covered by those categories were produced for use by Government and which are primarily consumed by other users. This report seems like a perfect starting point for identifying such datasets.

3. What do you think the impacts of the three options would be for you and/or other groups outlined above? Please provide evidence to support your answer where possible.

1. The status quo already includes some commitment to continue to open up more sources of data, so as there is no perceived change it is difficult to talk about impacts. If the commitments are honoured and carried out in the true spirit of opening up useful data to the public then it would have an impact, but it would seem likely to be less than the other 2 options.
2. Cost is an absolute barrier to any use by me and most community organisations I have involvement with and therefore this option would continue to exclude me from data use. Section 4.24 seems to be an arbitrary addition to this option and as explained in my answer to question 4 would naturally lead to a less fair competition with existing providers and act as a barrier to innovation and start-ups.
3. The feature limited freemium options seems to be already tacitly used by organisations such as the OS, who give away some low detail data sets such as StreetView but charge for more detailed ones, which has made it useful to a limited extent for community mapping but seems to have been carried out without a real consideration of what would be off value to society. Limiting within certain geographical bounds would seem like a good approach to providing useful data to community and local interest groups whilst persuading commercial users to pay for nationwide access. On a similar theme, a limit based on non-profit usage would provide for mine and many other community use cases whilst still satisfying the Governments need to ‘encourage’ private investment.

4. A further variation of any of the options could be to encourage PDC and its constituent parts to make better use of the flexibility to develop commercial data products and services outside of their public task. What do you think the impacts of this might be?

Unless all the public task data were released for free (re)use such a variation would see the PDC compete unfairly with private organisations, and would likely stifle innovation. If one assumes they would act like a conventional commercial entity when developing such products they would have the ability to erect barriers to entry by weakening or obfuscating the public task data. This variation would run counter to the “stimulat[ion of] the development of an information market”.

It is worrying that this particular ‘issue’ is being raised so prominently within the consultation.

5. Are there any alternative options that might balance Government’s objectives which are not covered here? Please provide details and evidence to support your response where possible.

One such alternative consideration is the impact free access will have if combined with efforts to encourage volunteer and commercial contribution to the services. A prime example is the role the OpenStreetMap project plays in providing up to date information about the condition and route of rights of way; something which is currently not maintained with any degree of consistency or appropriate quality by either local councils or the Ordnance Survey.

Dear Nicola Blackwood,

Of the ~200 thugs Theresa May stated had been arrested during and
after the recent protests in London, 138 were the “mindless thug[s]” involved in occupying Fortnum & Mason.

I direct your attention to a video (published by the Guardian) taken by
‘legal observers’ within the Fortnum & Mason store [4]. The video shows
a police chief inspector calmly telling the protesters that they: are
free to go, will be safely escorted from the building, and had not been
involved in violent thuggery. So, Theresa May made a political
statement which contradicted the legal opinion of a police chief
inspector (or the inspector was lying when addressing the public);
either is distressing.

In all likelihood the charges against the individuals arrested will be
minor or will be dropped entirely; However, it is a concern if a
trumped up charge for a public order offence could in future results in
having you banned from attending protests.

In the mean time the figures are being used to fuel a cross party zeal
for authoritarian measures. I would like your assurances that you will
act to ensure that stereotyping and knee jerk reactions do not drive
policy. You seem to be a keen question writer and I’m generally happy
with the tone you’ve taken on the Protection of Freedoms Bill; perhaps
you’d consider a question to the home secretary on this issue?

(I have no involvement with UK Uncut or know anyone personally effected
by the events in question; I’m simply concerned by the tone taken by
MPs on this issue)

Yours sincerely,
Craig Loftus

P.S. I request the right to publish (on my blog) your response to my letter.

Dear Nicola Blackwood,

Ed Vaizey, MP Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries recently wrote in reply to a letter from the Open Rights Group:

Jeremy and I met with key players from the digital economy
on 23 February to discuss developing new ways for people to
access content online. Coming out of this meeting was a
proposal for a Working Group to be formed to look at
industry self-regulatory measures to tackle online
copyright infringement through site-blocking.

I recognise that it is very important that consumer
Interests are considered very carefully, and we will
be inviting consumer representative groups to participate
in future discussions on the issue.

As a self confessed civil libertarian I’m sure you react as badly as I do to extra-legal authoritarian solutions such as the site-blocking that Vaizey clearly supports. I urge you to voice dissatisfaction with such a proposal, and question the overly narrow remit of the Working Group.

“Industry self-regulatory” measures such as the US DMCA support for take-down notices are prone to abuse by aggressive rights-holders; particularly with regard to social media sites such as Youtube. It should be clear to anyone why they are popular with large corporate rights holders and unpopular with (legally) creative individuals.

Yours sincerely,
Craig Loftus

1 860 kWh (per person per year, UK, 2007). I’ll write about how my consumption compares once I have more lovely data to play with.

That is based on data from The Department of Business Innovation and Skills on the UK domestic electricity consumption in 2007 (117 126.2 GWh) and the associated number of domestic meters (26 670.3×10³)¹. For the per person figure, the UK 2001 Census provides a persons per household figure of 2.36².

1. Electricity Consumption Data at Regional and Local Authority Level
2. Census 2001 – People and their homes in England and Wales

I just ran a cropper of this problem when trying to request some changes be made to my university’s central address book. The maintainer seemed quite confused by my referring to it as “the university address book”… apparently I should have known to call it Person Finder. Silly me! One email simply reads:

It’s called Person Finder.

What is wrong with “Address book”, that is surely what it is to most people? Perhaps I am different, do most people think in terms of names or what something actually does or is? Other than being memorable, what is the point, and if that is the only point does it really help us remember or communicate about a particular thing?

The two extremes of this might results in my being called “vegetarian engineer from Guisborough” or, on the other hand, Person 728692. Although many of our names did once reflect key identifying traits, we just got lazy or sentimental when it came to changing them… I should really be living in a loft-house below a cliff face. A person is something which must clearly be named in a global context which lends more weight to a numbering system…and I do not think I am something which already has a widely accepted name nor can I be easily and intuitive described! We are all different things to different people after all. There are clearly circumstances where naming is the most desirable solution but I feel we take it too far!

This post started off which a clear intention to rant about something very specific… it turned into just a amble with a particularly aggressive tone.

I have tacitly realised this on several occasions but have usually shrugged my shoulders and accepted it. Today I’ve decided to make steps to rectify the situation. I’m going to add the Financial Times and The Daily Mail to my feeds (I might have to change the latter as I’m not sure I’ll be able to survive reading it for long!). This is a paltry step really… but what else can I do? Perhaps I should try befriending a Tory voter?

I’ve added two bath area and will be adding more!