The beta version of the Taskforce report has attracted several hundred comments which we have been working through this week as we draft the final version. I hope that we will be able to make this final version public at the start of next week.
Perhaps not surprisingly the section on geospatial data has attracted the most discussion with over 30 comments registered.
A number of these have asked for more emphasis to be placed on access to address and postcode data and others have picked up the issue of ‘derived data’.
On the derived data issue the guidance sent to local authorities about the incompatibility of OS and Google Maps licenses is very instructive. This reinforces strongly the view that there is a problem we must urgently address if a public body cannot plot the location of public services on a map and then display this on commonly used platforms like Google Maps.
Richard Allan, Task Force Chair
Power of Information Task Force 
I had a useful meeting with two people from the Ordnance Survey’s Pricing and Licensing Team on Tuesday.
They considered that clicking points/lines on Google Maps creates OS-derived data (if you make use of the TeleAtlas mapping which is derived from OS mapping). So using Google Maps to digitise and then display the location of any UK location is currently against OS licence terms. This is clearly very silly and un-enforceable due to the sheer numbers of people using Google Maps for UK locations.
They also admitted that OS don’t actually have a licence that suits the display of OS-derived routes and points on slippy maps like Google’s. All their royalty fees are based on “route transactions” and “address transactions” which aren’t defined if you’re plotting lots of routes and points on one map, and repeatedly requesting new location information as you scroll and zoom.
I await new licensing terms, and announcements in the Budget, with great interest 🙂