Charles Arthur has asked me to post some information which I have sent him privately as part of a private email exchange.
I believe the exchange between him and me is getting far to “all encompassing” to debate over the blog.
My main contention on the Cambridge study is that it was constrained in such a way that the only conclusion they could have come to was the one they did. After all there is bound to be a benefit from free data if (as Cambridge does) ALL other factors such as investment costs, other consequential costs, market distortions, etc are ruled out of consideration by the TORs. It does not take a team of Cambridge economists to determine that others would benefit if any organisation provided free services!! However this was their remit but I do find it bizarre, indeed inexcusable, that professional economists who were supposed to be completing a consultancy report did not do any sensitivity analysis at all. There are many assumptions and given the incomplete data available to come to an apparently rigorously quantified conclusion as they do is hardly rigorous analysis.
The report in my opinion is therefore fatally flawed and as DBERR have indicated – it appears that nothing will in reality change.
Charles has also made reference to me in our private exchanges to the Met Office and its bulk data.
Met Office bulk data is very different from other bulk data in that it is to a significant part collected through an international protocol whereby all Met Offices freely exchange data collected over their territory since it is impossible to produce meaningful forecasts without worldwide observations. Much of this data is also now collected through internationally funded space programmes. The data collection cost to all met organisations worldwide is therefore effectively syndicated. The release of this, in effect, internationally syndicated data is managed and controlled through the World Met Organisation under international protocols. To disturb these for some debatable local economic benefit could potentially put at risk the life critical services of international meteorology.
This is but one other example of why the one size fits all model of “free our data” cannot be applied to all UK organisations. Even the Cambridge report sees at least two different sorts of Trading Fund - registration based where they suggest Ramsey pricing is applied so subsidising data access from other customers and the others where they don't really have a solution other than to say Gov to fund and where, in the case of OS the FOD campaign now suggests that one "registration based" organisation, Land Registry, pick up the tab and passes it on o its customers. Even this is far too simplistic as the Met Office example above illustrates.
Charles also gave the example of how I benefit from "free Google". Of course I and others get benefit from these services but Google pay for access to their OS data and recover their costs through advertising and other means. In effect I "pay" for Google by becoming subjected to advertising – much as I pay for ITV in the same way. This is fair as other users of OS data do not subsidise Google – the FOD model would have Google getting OS data for free - paid for by Land Registry customers - hardly fair.
Charles also suggests that what is being suggested (that Land Registry fees are increased to fund OS) is a practical, possibly expedient, political solution. I do agree that politics is the art of the possible and it is precisely because of this I do not believe that the Government will put another “tax” on housebuyers to fund the OS. The only way to fairly achieve the FOD ends is to lobby for a general change in the rules regarding Trading Funds and to have the Gov fund the “free data” costs - i.e. to be a “surrogate customer” for the free data. This is not impossible but would mean that the Gov establishes models with all Trading Funds separately (a not insignificant task) and metrics to pay them for what in effect would be new “public tasks”. While the models could probably have one set of principles given the wide variation of the operations of the Trading Funds each would have to be tailored to the individual organisation's needs. There is then also the question of the "data" within non Trading Funds.
If there is to be a fair and equitable way to fund the release of such data from the Public Sector overall then the only fair way is for Government of fund the whole of this through in effect central taxation. Both Trading Funds and other organisations would then have this as a "public task" funded, as most "public tasks" are, from central funds. If the overall economy is to benefit from this then surely the overall economy should pay and not each organisation being made to penalise its other customers, or even as suggested that one organisation's customers are penalised for the benefit of free data for the customers of another organisation, to meet this policy.
