New website Plots UK’s 60,000 Phone Masts

I received this press release for new website that highlights an important example of re-use of public data disclosed under the EIRs. Last September the ICO served a Decision Notice under the Environmental Information Regulations ordering Ofcom to provide all data on mobile phone base stations held within its Sitefinder database. Ononemap has added the data to a map using the grid coordinates .

The the phone mast data on the website is reproduced with the following copyright statement:

© Ofcom. Information reproduced accurately and in context from the Mobile Phone Base Station Database and with adherence to the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. OnOneMap displays the mast information as per the aforementioned database as of December 2006.

The press release

OnOneMap Plots UK’s 60,000 Phone Masts
Public can now access information about phone masts in their area.

London, 19th February 2007 – OnOneMap, the company that plots useful information on one map at www.ononemap.com, today switches on a new feature enabling users to see phone mast locations. Users can opt to plot icons representing the location of actual phone masts by searching for any location in the United Kingdom and ticking the phone masts tick box in “Map options”.

Data for nearly 60,000 mobile telephony, railway and emergency services masts is available. Some basic information about each mast is available by clicking on the mast icon.

“OnOneMap believes wholeheartedly in the provision of information to the public in a highly usable and accessible manner. We have already made it possible to search for properties for sale, sold properties, secondary schools and supermarkets in one place and we plan to make further data sets available throughout 2007” says Philip Sheldrake, co-founder and Managing Director, OnOneMap.

I've looked at the site and from a functionality point of view is impressive. The site use the google maps open source code to create the map on which the data is overlaid.

A changing attitude to information in government?

This story in The Guardian at the weekend - "Ministers wake to potential of people power on the net" starts to indicate a possible new direction in terms of a broader government information policy. Whilst campaigners have been concerned about recent threats to the FOIA in terms of a restrictive fees regime & an attempt to remove Parliament from FOI it would appear in the broader areas of open government and proactive release a more open approach is being considered. The Guardian reported that government is considering these issues:

The government plans to put more information on the net, including health and safety records of restaurants, and local planning applications.

Whitehall officials regard it as inevitable that information-sharing forums will develop to discuss the quality of public sector performance, including individual GPs and teachers, as well as bad garages, rogue builders, and holiday destinations

This can added to recent reports that government will consider in future publishing legal advice: the Constitutional affairs Minister Harrier Harman, broke ranks to declare that in future the attorney general's legal advice to the government should be made publicly available (though whether is this a formal emerging position or policy pitch for the deputy leadership contest is unclear) (also see The Guardian)

According to the article Tom Steinberg from mysociety appears to having some influence over this new emerging Government Information Policy (his My Society group were commissioned by the Govt to set up the highly successful No10 petitioning system). In a recent interview Steinberg suggested: "citizens being allowed to comment and exchange tips on government websites such as HM Revenue and Custom's e-tax service" for example.

Mysociety are also behind the Freedom of Information Filer and Archive project which has recently recieved funding and is under development.

Another possible new policy hinted at in the first article I referred to was "permitting civil servants to post information on sites", an issue recently raised on the ideal government blog.

These new policy ideas appear to be drawing on the emerging concept of "information commons" - "Information resources shared by a community of producers and consumers in an open access environment" (definition source). This paper is good intro to the concept: The Information Commons: a public policy report by Nancy Kranich. View PDF Published by Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

Civil service bloggers

Over at the Ideal Government blog they've been discussing whether Civil Servants should blog and (rather tongue in cheek) what a civil service blogging code could contain

Number of Govt websites drastically reduced

As part of the launch its progress report on ‘Transformational Government: enabled by technology’ the Cabinet Office has announced that the number of websites will be drastically reduced: "26 of the websites examined so far are certain to be retained by Government, while 551 will go. Information of continuing relevance from closed sites will transfer to www.direct.gov.uk [External website] and www.businesslink.gov.uk"

Read the annual report (see page 15)

MPs have asked a series of PQs about costs and numbers of visits to govt websites

-See Mark Oaten's PQ

Freedom of Information Filer& Archive secures funding

Well done to Tom and the team at My Society who have secured funding from the Rowntree Reform Trust for their Freedom of Information Filer and Archive(FOIFA) project and will start work early in the new year. Read more.

Hacking democracy film - US election voting machines -lessons for the UK?

I attended the e-Democracy 2006 conference in London yesterday - I did attempt to make my first ever live conference post to my blog- my wifi worked but sadly my battery did not! The conference proved to a very interesting and enjoyable day - also very refreshing not to have any PowerPoints used and let open speaking and discussion prevail.

One of the highlights of the day was the first ever screening of the film "Hacking Democracy" (from HBO films) - this film has been creating quite a stir in the US as it was shown just before the US mid terms. I found the film a pretty chilling insight into the risks of electronic voting. The film follows an activist from Seattle who tries to unravel the secrets behind the voting machines used in the US that are controlled by major corporations, even election officials are not allowed access to the code. The film does contain suggestions of possible election fraud, whilst not uncovering evidence of fraud, the film proves how unsecure the systems are and the links between the corporations producing the machines and the Republican party. One interesting aspect of the film was the activists' use of the state level FOI laws in trying to access information relating ballots and machines used - the film suggested this had some success but didn't clearly focus on the outcomes of the requests.

View a snippet from Youtube below. Apparently there isn't a UK TV deal for the film yet - if you want to see it - why not contact BBC or channel 4?



The activists' site: black box voting is still available.

It is worth noting that the e-voting issue is still on the agenda here in the UK - the DCA are inviting expressions of interest from English local authorities seeking to run electoral modernisation pilots at the May 2007 local elections. Also see this posting on Jason Kitcat's blog he points out that "the Electoral Commission's own figures for the 2003 pilots showed that e-voting had no significant impact on turnout."

Tory plan to reveal expenditure

I've posted a few times recently about the fedspending.org website and database in the US and the recent Accountability & TransparencyAct passsed in the US to set a comprehensive expenditure database; the Tories are now making a push for one here in the UK. It will interesting to see if cross-party support develops, I do wonder whether the Treasury will baulk at the cost of such a project given the complexity of maintaining and managing the data, plus the current problems with large IT projects. It will also be important to follow closely any plans related to how the resuable the data will be - whether the raw data will available for others to reuse - free or at a cost. See my posts: on fedspending.org and US Accountability & Transparency Act. In the US the blogging community got heavily involved in lobbying for the Bill to passed.

See BBC News:
"The Conservatives will unveil plans to allow taxpayers to go online and find out how their money is being spent. Shadow chancellor George Osborne is publishing legislation requiring the Treasury to set up a website revealing every expenditure over £25,000."

Also see the Conservatives' website

New decision - first major fees case

This case is interesting, the complaint relating to Section 12 was upheld, a decision that given the evidence presented by the MoD would seem fair, but I wonder whether the Information Commissioner could have give further consideration to the following issues: was the initial refusal: "On 5th April 2005 the public authority refused the request on the grounds that “the War Pensions Computer System that records and runs the War Pensions scheme is unable to identify this particular (Falklands) conflict and therefore no figures are available." a clear response under S17?

Although there was not a statutory need to do so I wonder whether the issue of making a charge could have been discussed with the MoD.

Also I would also suggest that the ICO could go further in the investigation and perhaps show some evidence of scutinising the MoD's claims in more detail: they could have gone to the MoD and looked at the computer system themselves in situ and asked to see the data structure "live". Or the ICO could have asked for systems based evidence of the full database structures used by the computer system. I also would contend that complex cost cases such as this one involving IT systems will crop up on on a regular basis at the ICO and hope that the ICO have officers with specialist IT skills to tackle these cases with a high level of scrutiny.

Finally the case raises issues about the whole issue of the obtaining information held in databases - requests can often be denied due to costs limits being breached by poor data structure and how even "new" databases will often pose this problem. The issue will be for databases to be designed (within reasonable limits) with not just the business requirements of the public authority but bearing in my mind future public interest in the data, that may be different to the business need.

In this case in terms of best practice the ICO could have asked whether the Mod had any future plans to make this data available as a historical resource using a new database or make suggestions using a practice recommendation - though I would accept this could be seen as beyond the remit of the ICO. As ever happy to have comments added below.



Case Ref: FS50084565
Date: 13/04/06
Public Authority: Ministry of Defence.
The complainant requested information about Falklands War Veterans in receipt of a War Pension due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The MoD refused the request on the grounds that the collation of the information would exceed the costs limit. The Commissioner investigated this claim and was satisfied that the MoD had applied the section 12 exemption correctly.
Section of Act/EIR & Findings: FOI s.12 - Complaint Not Upheld
Full Transcript of Decision Notice FS50084565