Information sharing in the Big Society

In one of my past lives I ran an information and mapping business – Land Management Information Service (LaMIS) – which took a new approach to public information.  I think my experience may have some application to the idea of the Big Society.

The idea was this.  Government (and its agencies and local authorities) hold massive quantities of spatial data – data which has

• a significant value to them in discharging their functions;
• a certain amount of value to the wider public (in the interests of openness and accountability);
• a commercial value to some business sectors;
• and a specific, quite different, non-monetary value to the people who own, manage and make their living from the land to which the data relates.

I set up LaMIS for the last of these groups in particular.  We offered a simple mapping software product, including aerial photography, OS mapping, environmental data and measurement and recording tools.  (These were the days just before Google Earth, and many of my farming customers still only had dialup broadband access.)

Intellectual property, enterprise and public good

Intellectual property, enterprise and public good

A discussion paper by Ben Bennetts FRSA, Managing Director, LaMIS, written between October 2005 and September 2007. This paper represents my personal views and not those of my employers, past or present.

LaMIS ceased trading in November 2007, but I have been asked to reproduce this paper as a contribution to ongoing debate in a number of areas.  A separate post, of current date, explores some of these ideas further.

This paper was originally written as a response to the launch of the RSA Adelphi Charter in October 2005, in the context of the issues faced by the Land Management Information Service (LaMIS). It also covers some wider issues beyond those which directly affect the business – and some which have been raised at other recent RSA events which go beyond the intellectual property debate. The paper is a work in progress and I will be using it to take several different discussions forward in various arenas.