Ordnance Survey responded to our FOI request for publication of its study into itself and the best financial organisation for itself.

And in these times when MPs’ expenses are redacted, of course OS isn’t going to let us see everything.

That’s why the document, which I’ve uploaded as a PDF (though it’s originally a TIFF – apparently a scan of the paper document once the black marker pen had been wielded), is full of lacunae.

Source: Free Our Data

Challenge 1
Councils: Give us an RSS news feed by Christmas 2009
66 out of 436 UK local councils (15%) have RSS feeds.
Let’s make it 100% by Christmas 2009.

Source: Mash the State

This map shows MPs’ expenses for April 2007 to March 2008 taken from the data published on the UK Parliament website. The map is coloured according to total allowance expenditure (excluding travel expenses) and is clickable to see the breakdown for each constituency

Source: MapTube

After the results of the Show Us A Better Way competition - the X-Factor for web services (as I think I dubbed it) - now here’s the letdown. Ordnance Survey has emailed local government organisations waving its copyright stick. And it’s quite a bit stick. One which, in effect, could prevent many - perhaps all? - of the SUABW winners (Free Our Data announcement; BBC announcement), and certainly those which might rely on local authority data that is in any way geographically related - from being implemented, certainly on Google Maps. … That means that things like school catchment areas (if given to geographical accuracy, or pulled off an OS-based mapping system) or postbox locations (if local government holds them) or recycling locations or cycling routes or toilets… gracious me, I seem to have listed the top five applications suggested for SUABW.

Source: The Guardians Free Our Data