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UK fights against tide on data directive
A Europe-wide project to harmonise access to geographical data is at risk due to Britain's support for state-owned agencies
Michael Cross
Thursday July 27, 2006
The Guardian
Britain is threatening to kill at birth a project to simplify access to data crucial to the protection of Europe's land, air and water - unless it is modified to protect the interests of state-owned mapping agencies.
Inspire (www.ec-gis.org/inspire/), a European directive, seeks to end the situation in which neighbouring countries cannot make plans to deal with common issues because their national geographical databases do not line up. These differences can be as basic as the height of sea level. For example, notes Dr Max Craglia of the European commission's joint research centre in Ispra, Italy, there is a two-metre difference between Belgium and the Netherlands in the official height of low tide - essential data for flood prevention. The anomalies multiply when many national agencies and tiers of government are involved, as can be the case when protecting stretches of coastline from damage.
Inspire, which has been going through the EU's legislative process for two years, seeks to end such anomalies. It will require public bodies to make their "spatial information services" understandable and accessible among tiers of government and across national boundaries.
Nearly everyone supports the idea. But making geographical data freely available would destroy the business model of agencies such as Ordnance Survey, which funds activities by making a "profit" on sales of maps and geographical data. The OS warns of the threat in its latest annual report, published on Tuesday.
Charging policy
The government said this week it would support OS's right to set charges. Its position, which it claims has the backing of member states in the council of ministers, will lead to a clash with the European commission and parliament when the process of turning Inspire into law reaches its climax this autumn. Failure to agree could kill the whole initiative.
Followers of Technology Guardian's Free Our Data campaign will recognise a theme: the inevitable conflicts that arise when public bodies try to earn money from information resources gathered at public expense or with public resources. The campaign argues that such data should be made freely available for other public bodies to exploit and for private industry to turn into information products.
The UK is unusually committed to charging users for data rather than funding its dissemination from taxation. One expert places Britain at the extreme end of the spectrum, while its system of crown copyright is unique in Europe.
Concern about Inspire has been mounting in OS and its continental counterparts. In February 2005, Duncan Shiell, the OS's strategy director, warned MEPs that Inspire could be interpreted as banning the receipt of cash for cartographic work.
Lobbying - through EuroGeographics, which represents mapping agencies - stepped up when the parliament's environment committee proposed amending the previously agreed directive to free up access to data. In June, the parliament voted for a series of amendments. Amendment 18 would prevent mapping agencies blocking access to data on the grounds that access would compromise intellectual property rights. Another said fees charged for accessing data should be limited to the cost of processing the request.
Following the vote, the mapping agencies' lobbying escalated. Conservative MEP Geoffrey Van Orden warned of potential serious consequences for UK national security if information about maritime surveys was made freely available.
A critic at the other end of the spectrum, Liberal Democrat MP Chris Huhne, said such concerns verged on pottiness. However, he called on the government to protect the business of OS, whose headquarters lie in his constituency.
The UK government seems to sympathise with both criticisms. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is leading the UK's work on Inspire, said that while it supports the initiative, it has "some concerns". It will want to ensure that UK data trading policy is protected, that "any technical requirements are workable, proportionate and affordable" and that the directive "does not compromise national defence".
Conflicting views
Although the European council of ministers broadly supports Britain's position, it is in conflict with both the commission and the parliament. The directive now goes to a "conciliation process", which must be completed by the end of this year.
A spokesman for the UK in Brussels said the UK would support Inspire, but only if it agreed with the final text. "Our position is firmly that it is up to member states to decide the level of charging."
The implication is that Britain would be prepared to see the directive fall rather than compromise OS's commercial position.
Craglia says he is confident that Inspire will happen. However, he detects other factors at work. While one third of Europe's population live in a transborder area, few Britons do. As a result, moves to harmonise data across borders have a low priority to the UK government.
Christopher Corbin, a veteran critic of the trading fund model, puts it more bluntly. "It's the island nation mentality."
· What is Inspire?
Inspire stands for "infrastructure for spatial information in Europe". It is a European directive that will require governments to make geographical data available more easily, in order to underpin common policies to protect the environment. The idea is to ensure that environmental data is collected to the same standards and scales across Europe and is freely available to all. Proposed in 2004 by the EC, the directive sets out five principles:
· Spatial data should be collected once, at the level best suited to the task;
· Data from different sources should be capable of being shared among many users and applications;
· All levels of government should have access;
· Data needed for good governance should be available on conditions that do not restrict its extensive use;
· It should be easy to discover which spatial data is available and under what conditions.
Disagreements centre on the fourth condition. In effect, the European parliament says charging for geographical data restricts extensive use. The third arm of the European legislative process, the council of ministers, disagrees.
If the disagreement can be settled by the end of the year, the Inspire directive will become law.
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