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Vicky is one of the creators of CLGdotTV, where she also produces and presents programmes. She has 25 years experience of delivering projects in and for public sector organisations including government departments, local authorities, the NHS, and professional associations. Much of her work has been around digitally-enabled innovation and improvement.

@vickysargent

OpenStreetMap: should the public sector be making more use of this remarkable asset?

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In the first of a planned series on data and mapping, Brian Prangle of OpenStreetMap describes the project’s extraordinary development and its crowd-sourced, open and free-to-use outputs.

OpenStreetMap is a global project whose aspirations to ‘map the planet’ – because maps & data created by government agencies are not always free to use - were dismissed as ‘impossible’ when OSM started just over a decade ago.

Built by a community of GIS professionals, humanitarians, community activists and others who contribute and maintain data about roads, cafés, railway stations, phone boxes, defibrilators and more, OpenStreetMap makes maps that are open and free to use for any purpose.

In this conversation, Brian describes how developers can use OSM to integrate mapping services into their applications without incurring licensing fees, and why the public sector is a bit late to this party. He explains why OSM can often provide a much more up-to-date picture of dynamic cityscapes than ‘official’ maps that must undergo lengthy QA processes, and outlines how teams of OSM volunteers routinely support relief agencies by swiftly recreating maps that natural disasters have made useless.

The conversation also covers how to be an OSM volunteer, and what we’ll be discussing in future programmes, including ownership and licensing of map data, the economic value of opening up this data, and projects OSM is involved in around journey planning and routing and the creation of Welsh language maps.

 

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On 6th February 2019 we will be making five programmes about 'smart lives' in front of a studio audience. You could be in front of the camera or in our expert audience.

Check out the programme and book your (free) place in the audience on our eventbrite page.

Seats on panels are by invitation. Contact Ben Webber b.webber@boilerhouse.co.uk with detail of what you'd like to contribute.

 

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