Viewpoint 49,2 Public Information – now’s the time to make it freely available

Keith Dugmore

Marketers already make extensive use of information that is collected by government, but in recent months the pressure has been mounting for this to become free of charge, and for its licensing to become much simpler. Many commercial companies need information to make business decisions about the targeting of local markets and customers. These decisions are made in the context of the three broad activities of store location, database marketing, and market research surveys. In doing this, companies often draw upon a range of government data sets, which have the particular advantage of consistent national coverage. The suppliers include:

Office for National Statistics – especially for the Census, and large sample surveys
Post Office – the Postcode Address File
Ordnance Survey – grid references, map background, and boundaries
Land Registry – house prices
Valuation Office Agency – council tax bands, business property valuations
Environment Agency – floodplains (for property insurance)
Registry Trust – County Court Judgements of debts
Companies House – details of businesses

The striking thing to users of such data sets is the great variation between public sector information holders in the barriers that exist to access information. To take two examples: in recent years the Office for National Statistics has sought to maximise the use made of its data by scrapping charges, introducing simple Click-Use licensing, and making technical improvements to delivery. At the other end of the spectrum is Ordnance Survey which as a Trading Fund has to meet revenue targets, and consequently imposes charges and protects what it sees as its intellectual property with complex licensing agreements, and also pushes users towards value-added resellers. OS’s business model can also blight the use of related information sources, creating licensing difficulties with products such as census boundaries, and the stillborn plans for a definitive national address file.

Public information is collected largely at taxpayers’ expense, and the barriers to its widespread use should be removed wherever possible. Users will have better information – a step towards the perfect knowledge assumed in economists’ perfect markets – with consequent increases in efficiency. Increasing numbers of new users will also become aware of the benefits of sophisticated offerings from valueadded resellers, whose businesses will also grow. In the USA the free availability of government data has triggered much economic activity. It is encouraging to see that this issue is now becoming of increasing public interest in the UK. The Office of Fair Trading’s market study on the public use of commercial information, Postcomm’s investigation of the management of the Postcode Address File, and the Department of Communities and Local Government’s development of a Geographic Information Strategy are just three relevant developments. Most conspicuously, the Guardian’s ‘Free Our Data’ campaign has gained the support of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts. In the internet age, free public information is a goal whose time has come.

Keith Dugmore is Director of Demographic Decisions and set up the Demographics User Group, whose objective is to represent to government the needs of commercial users of its demographic statistics.

International Journal of Market Research 49(2), 2007

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