Optimists
A bit late for the party, if you ask me.
Ordnance Survey (OS) is launching an international service intended to make its expertise about data collection and maintenance, product development and geospatial data management available to overseas governments. To be known as Ordnance Survey International, the new organisation will be launched in September. It will be …
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Working just tickety-boo here, currently looking at the 1:25000 of Glen Eagles - and it's the reason I use bing for mapping, or Streetmap - OS maps are awesome.
When I'm at work, I can access the entire OS collection through my browser - and it's slightly awesome, though 1:500 and better is a bit too detailled...
The OS have an online JavaScript based API called OpenSpace: (http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/web-services/os-openspace/index.html)
It is trivial to use this in a webpage with default map controls - works across browsers, tablets, smart phones. Let's you see all the classic cartography, loved by many users of the traditional paper maps.
These are the people who 'upgraded' their online Getamap service using some proprietory Microsoft stuff (Silverlight) which means it doesn't work on any *nix machines (including Android).
OS was once a brilliant example of a world-leading publicly funded service, then it was privatised....'nuff said.
okay, not technically privatised ...
"although a government agency, since 1999 it has been required to act as a Trading Fund or commercial entity. This means that it is supposed to be totally self-funding from the commercial sale of its data and derived products" (result of quick qiki)
Before: working for the public good, Now: making as much dosh as possible.
if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...
Other trading funds - DVLA and Met Office, and many more.
A trading fund does not actually have to make a profit (a major difference between a trading fund and a share-holder owned company), it is just distanced from ministers and civil servants to allow the organisation to operate more like a company (including borrowing money on the open market) and be less influenced by current political thinking.
And I think that any difference between their costs and their income (profit or maybe described better as a trading surplus) does not have to be returned to the treasury, but can be invested internally. They have customers (which can be other government institutions - for example the DVLA has contracts with the Police and VOSA), and all of the relationships with customers and suppliers are governed by commercial law except in the few areas where the organisation involved in direct legislation.
There are no shareholders, and little in the way of bonus culture, so it may quack a little, but there is also a woof and a miaow in there somewhere.