The survey was carried out to identify:

• The current level of geographic information service in English Local Government in comparison to the 2009 GI survey by the LGA
• The understanding of and benefits from INSPIRE and the UK Location Programme
• The technical capabilities and readiness within local government to implement INSPIRE
• Other issues for supporting the implementation of INSPIRE

The results of the survey are now available on the LGA Website.

The results are already helping determine areas where improvements can be made to the support for local authorities by both the LGA and UK Location Programme.

An update about the local government requirements to meet INSPIRE is available on the LGA website.

We are happy to provide an Outline Agenda for the Data Provider Winter Workshop on the 9 February 2012. UK Location and AGI are hosting the workshop for UK Location Data Providers at the AGI’s central London office from 10:00am.

This free event will provide you with an opportunity to:

• Celebrate what’s been achieved so far
• Find out about how people are using the services
• Learn about download services
• Get to grips with data interoperability looking at the INSPIRE data specs and transformation options

The workshop is open to anyone who has or is thinking about publishing data to the UK Location discovery metadata service.

Further details are provided in the  Outline Agenda .

This free event will provide you with an opportunity to:

• Celebrate what’s been achieved so far
• Find out about how people are using the services
• Learn about download services
• Get to grips with data interoperability looking at the INSPIRE data specs and transformation options

The workshop is open to anyone who has or is thinking about publishing data to the UK Location DMS.  A full agenda will be published shortly.

To find out more and register to attend please visit the AGI Website.

Hello

Welcome to the first UK Location Data Provider Update.  We hope that this will become a regular publication that you will find engaging and helpful.  This first edition reviews progress in 2011, with a focus on the November INSPIRE deadline.

Now the central UK Location Infrastructure is live we need to start thinking about how we can make it better.  Our commitment article, on page 2, provides a reminder of your commitments as a data provider.  In monitoring UK Location metadata and services we have identified a number of recurring quality issues that need some attention.  Our Common Issues article discusses these.

Finally we would like to invite you to an event we are holding in the New Year, find out more on page 4.

Don’t forget you can always get help and advice from the programme team contact us via our website at location.defra.gov.uk/contact-us.

2011 was a really important year for the UK Location Programme, when the concepts became reality.  2011 was also important because the first significant INSPIRE deadlines arrived.  The challenge we faced was huge, we had a complex IT service to implement, tight deadlines and a changing policy environment to manage.

For INSPIRE we had identified around 230 datasets from 34 organisations that needed to be published with view services by May and then made INSPIRE compliant by November.

So how did we do?

In April the UK Location Discovery Service (DMS) was launched, the service enabled data publishers to register their metadata services with data.gov.uk, which then harvests the metadata and presents it to users.

By May over 160 INSPIRE metadata records had been harvested from 14 data publishers, 13 records for INSPIRE view services.  Publishing so much data in such a short space of time was an incredible achievement.  Whilst there were some teething troubles we think things went pretty well considering the scale of the challenge!

Over the summer we worked to resolve a number of issues with Data Providers and improve our guidance documents.

By the November INSPIRE deadline we had metadata published for 216 INSPIRE datasets and view services in place for over 70% of these. 

Before we can state that the UK has meet it’s INSPIRE obligations in full couple of challenges remain: we need to determine the level of compliance of view services and publish the outstanding datasets.  Both these matters are in hand.  We continue to carry a risk of infraction, infraction is the process by which the EC enforces Directives, but believe this to be low.

We would like to thank everyone who has helped make 2011 such a great year and look forwards to working with you in 2012.

Now the UK Location DMS is operational on data.gov.uk we need to ensure it is providing a high quality service, with current and comprehensive data metadata, to enable users to find, understand and access data.

By publishing data to the UK Location DMS data providers are making a commitment to maintain their metadata and services; this commitment is set out in full in the discovery metadata service guidance (p10).  In short you should:

• Support data users.
• Adopt a process of continuous improvement for the resources you publish.
• Maintain your discovery metadata.
• Apply the standards set out by the UK Location Programme and INSPIRE.
• Release your data with clear licensing and charging policies.
• Have clear procedures to make complaints received under data access legislation.
• Provide e-commerce services where charges apply for INSPIRE data.
• Have clear procedures to make complaints received under data access legislation.
• Agree to your data being viewable using data.gov.uk and other evaluation clients as appropriate.

Whilst this looks like a major commitment most of the points simply affirm good practice that should be in place already.  We would encourage you to strive to meet these commitments by working to continuously improve the services you provide.  A few simple actions can make a big difference:

• Review the feedback you are getting on data.gov.uk (star ratings, comments etc) consider them and respond where possible.
• Check your data, services and metadata against the UK Location Programme and INSPIRE guidance and fix any issues.
• Look at your data publication processes so that data, services and metadata are updated consistently.
• Ensure your internal data policies are clear and available to users of your data.

UK Location Programme can help you meet your commitment…

In terms of technical issues we can use our management information to identify issues and help data providers to resolve them.  We are already working with a number of data providers to help them improve their metadata to ensure the DMS performs correctly and INSPIRE requirements are met.

We have a pool of experts, who can advise on business issues such as licensing and charging, and we are working to improve and develop our guidance in this area.

The programme has also been working with other initiatives such as the PSMA (and equivalent devolved initiatives) to ensure they are compatible with UK Location Strategy aims and INSPIRE.

If you would like any help to meet your commitment please contact us at location.defra.gov.uk/contact-us.

We will explore some of the commitments in more detail in future issues.

To ensure we are providing the best possible service for users and ensure that the UK is complying with INSPIRE the UK Location team has been busy reviewing and assuring the metadata and services that are registered with the UK Location DMS at data.gov.uk.  A number of issues have been identified that are affecting the performance of the service, some of these affect a small number of bodies and others are wider issues.

In this article we summarise some of the common issues and briefly advise how to resolve them.  If you think any of these issues affect your metadata and want some help to fix them please contact us at location.defra.gov.uk/contact-us.

On 9 February 2011 UK Location and AGI will be hosting a workshop for UK Location Data Providers at the AGI’s central London office.

This free event will provide you with an opportunity to:

• Celebrate what’s been achieved so far
• Find out about how people are using the services
• Learn about download services
• Get to grips with data interoperability looking at the INSPIRE data specs and transformation options

The workshop is open to anyone who has or is thinking about publishing data to the UK Location DMS.  A full agenda will be published in the New Year.

To find out more and register to attend please visit the AGI Website.

January 2012 – Collection of data for 2011 INSPIRE monitoring return . To be submitted to EU before 15 May 2012.

We’ll need your help with this! INSPIRE data providers will hear from us in the New Year

 February 2012 – View service operational guidance

• This guidance will help data publishers understand if their view services are correctly configured and INSPIRE compliant.

9 February 2012 – Data Provider Workshop

• An opportunity to network and learn more about UK Location and INSPIRE

June 2012 – INSPIRE Annex I & II Download Services initial operating capability

• Annex I & II data providers will need to have implemented download and co-ordinate transformation services for their data by June 2012.  Guidance should be available from the EC in early 2012.

location.defra.gov.uk

The UK Location website includes broad range of information about the programme and guidance for data providers/publishers, and systems developers.

You can also subscribe to our news feed or RSS.

@UKLocation
You can follow us on Twitter for our latest news and views

Location Data on data.gov.uk
There are now over 1000 metadata records in the UK Location discovery service at data.gov.uk you can browse these records at: http://bit.ly/mRkRQp.

Helpdesk
If you need any help or advice please contact us at location.defra.gov.uk/contact-us.

 Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

We hope you will find the first UK Location Data Providers Update useful – but we don’t want to leave this to chance.  So, this news item is also a blog and we would like to get your feedback.  Please let us know your thoughts on what we have provided – plus you will also be able to see the comments of others and can add your thoughts to those as well.

Please note that separate guidance may be published in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  Supplementary guidance way also be published by your public sector representative bodies, or thematic networks

The UK Location Programme has adopted the INSPIRE mandated systems for View Services within UK Location, the European Terrestrial System developed in 1989 (ETRS89) for regions of continental Europe and the International Terrestrial Reference System (ITRS) for regions outside of continental Europe.

The Coordinate Reference Systems technical policy document provides detail of the mandated and additional systems that have been adopted as well as technical guidance for data publishers who are developing a View Service delivered by a Web Map Service (WMS).

This technical policy will form part of the View Service Operational Guide which will provide guidance on the creation, publishing and maintenance of UK Location Network and View Services published under INSPIRE and for all other location information published through UK Location.

We are happy to provide a finalised agenda for the Linked Data for Executives Briefing: Building the Business Case on the 24^th November which the UK Location Programme  is holding in conjunction with the Chartered Institute for IT (BCS) Geospatial Specialist Group.

Finalised agenda including details for registration, which has been extended to the 17^th November.

This briefing will provide an opportunity to understand the benefits, costs, and resourcing requirements in making business information more “linkable” and implementing this using Linked Data approach. The objective being to streamline business processes and provide better insight into organisational processes while, in the process, fulfilling the requirements of INSPIRE

When: 24 November 2011, 13:00-16:20

Where: BCS London Office, 5 Southampton Street, WC2E 7HA

Cost: Free of charge

The Consultation on PDC asked for views on matters such as how to strike a balance between making data available free and the affordability of any resulting loss of government revenue; how licensing of government data might be made simpler and easier, and whether changes would be needed to regulatory oversight?

On Open Data, the consultation sought views on how a ‘right to data’ might be enforced, how public bodies could be held to account for delivery of the Open Data policy, how to ensure that the most useful data would be collected and published, and how government could stimulate private enterprise to use public data.

The UK Location Council took the opportunity to contribute to the debate by submitting a consolidated  response to the two consultations.  The work of the UK Location Programme, which is overseen by the Council, is already well aligned with the Government’s Transparency Agenda, including our work on INSPIRE and location data but also through, for example, our focus on open standards, having a single access point, promotion of interoperability and our approach to simplified licensing.

The majority of Council member organisations were involved in the preparation of the response document and agreed the content.  However, some Council member organisations were unable to give their formal agreement to the final document because of their proximity to the centre of the discussions on the PDC and Open Data.  In addition, the Devolved Administrations (which are represented on the Council) while recognising the need for consistency in policy across the UK, reserved the right to make their own arrangements. 

The key points made in the Council’s response are: 

• It is essential for INSPIRE provisions to be taken into account in both debates.
• The benefits of adopting the INSPIRE approach are set out, and the experience gained by the UK Location Programme was offered to help inform best practice.
• The proposed Public Data Corporation is an opportunity to simplify data licensing.
• Consideration should to be given to meeting the large extent of user needs with free data, and the development of policies to remove barriers for non-commercial use.
• The importance of data quality and interoperability is emphasised.
• Clear definitions are required of the public task of the PDC organisations, clarity on what data and what organisations are in scope of the policy.
• The Council is willing to act as a crosscutting Transparency Sector Board for location data.

The UK Location Council’s response is available to read as a downloadable pdf here, along with a covering letter from Miles Parker, Chair of the Council.

Provisional Agenda for the Linked Data for Executives – Building the Business Case Briefing including further details, such as registration.

This briefing will provide an opportunity to understand the benefits, costs, and resourcing requirements in making business information more “linkable” and implementing this using Linked Data approach. The objective being to streamline business processes and provide better insight into organisational processes while, in the process, fulfilling the requirements of INSPIRE

When: 24 November 2011, 13:00-16:20

Where: BCS London Office, 5 Southampton Street, WC2E 7HA

Cost: Free of charge

UK Location will be providing an update at the AGI Suppliers SIG on Wednesday 16 November 2011 at the London School of Economic Science.  This will be a half day event.

 The agenda will include: 

• A general UK Location programme update
• Discovery Metadata Services
• UK Location Search and Evaluation Service
• Linked Data
• Network Services
• INSPIRE data specifications
• General discussion

Please refer to the AGI SS SIG 161111 (Outline Agenda)for further information, and details on registration. 

The event is free to attend for AGI members from the supplier community.

Spatial Data Interest Community (SDIC) or Legally Mandated Organisation (LMO) should login at http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.cfm/pageid/7/type/login and submit their comments using the templates provided before the deadline of 21 October 2011.