Ordnance Survey map data to be opened up

The government has pledged to make data from the Ordnance Survey available to the public next year.

The move will see Great Britain's official mapping agency make information such as electoral and local authority boundaries and postcode areas freely available.

Plans were announced by the Prime Minister this week as part of a drive to make government more transparent and making data easily available to the public.

"I think we're on the verge of a revolution that can transform public services and the public sector," Prime Minister Brown said at the Smarter Government seminar on Tuesday.

"I'm speaking very specifically about how government can change to meet the needs of the times. I think we are determined to be the first government in the world to open up public information in a way that is far more accessible to the general public," Brown continued.

Postcode information is generally sold to mapping services, though a databse of the 1.8 million postcode areas in the UK leaked onto the web back in September.


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