Spatial Information Services Manager Ron Wilkinson writes about the value of open data and how the IS Spatial Hub has embraced this concept.
There are differing views about whether public data (not our private information) should be open to all. Organisations working with licensed datasets are often criticised for not releasing them into the wild.
This accusation is particularly common for geospatial data – which is effectively any data with a location element. This position is further compounded when considering public sector data. As things like libraries and prescriptions are provided as free resources, should data from local and central government not also assume a similar model?
We increasingly live in a digital era and data is becoming an ever more valuable asset. Just consider why almost every website wishes for you to consent to cookies – just so the service knows a fraction about your habits.
Scottish local government creates masses of data in the course of providing public services and delivering Scottish Government policy. Through the Spatial Hub, the Improvement Service ensures that much of this information is shared, and for the first time, is now being made available nationally under open government licence terms, so that it can be fully utilised and accessed.
Spatial Hub datasets cover everything from environment and pollution, energy, health and care services to community and society, planning, roads and transport, plus many more.
Previously, this information was limited to Scottish public sector organisations and academics. However, support from the Scottish Government has allowed the Improvement Service to make this information available to everyone. This is the first time in the UK that such a significant geospatial data resource has been made available as open data; open for anyone to access, use and share as they see fit.
The journey to reach this milestone started in 2015. That was when the Spatial Hub was conceived. The objective was to replicate the blueprint and success of the One Scotland Gazetteer – Scotland’s national address and street register, by bringing important and valuable local government data together to make it more useful, accessible and beneficial to the entire data community.
This now established approach requires the Improvement Service to work with all 32 Scottish local authorities on a daily basis to harvest the information. For the One Scotland Gazetteer, the data supply is automated, and approximately 700 data validation checks are run on every piece of information received. Similarly, for the Spatial Hub, a robust data assurance process is performed on all data supplied. When you consider that this encompasses approximately 50 different datasets supplied by 32 local authorities, it represents a lot of data processing and validation.
So, what happens next? Datasets such as planning applications, school catchment boundaries and council assets constantly evolve. They are not static. Therefore, the Spatial Hub open data release is just the beginning. The project represents a long-term commitment to sharing vital Scottish local government information that can be utilised by businesses and citizens alike. The processes and relationships that have been established aim to deliver accurate and authoritative data for many years to come.
These datasets can be used in a variety of ways by a range of organisations and individuals. For example, local designations for nature, biodiversity and landscape are all vital environmental sources of information and form key elements of the planning process in Scotland. School catchment data, which shows the geographies relating to the enrolment of each local authority school, is often of keen interest to anyone wishing to buy a home. The availability of these Spatial Hub datasets not only saves members of the public or organisations time, effort and money, it also helps to standardise and maintain the quality of the data used across a wide variety of sectors.
In addition to the significant benefits to those parties who can now access the data free of charge, local authorities benefit through a considerable saving of resource in developing their own data sharing solutions. They also benefit through increased standardisation of much of the data and expert guidance relating to best practice for data management.
So why not have a look at spatialhub.scot and access some key local government geospatial information. There’s more there than you might think.