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Guest post by Jon Fairall

 

The Commonwealth Government has released the content of the Lawrence Report along with an itemised response to the points raised therein. The report, by Ordnance Survey director general Vanessa Lawrence, was given to the Australian government in October 2011. It contains 22 recommendations.

 

The report is one of a raft of reports that could potentially change the way spatial data is used. These include the APS200 Location Project Report. APS200 is a leadership forum designed to streamline the use of data in government.

 

The report's central recommendation, that a central policy office for spatially-enabled data be established outside Geoscience Australia, has already been carried out. It is called the Office of Spatial Policy, and forms a unit of the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism.

 

Most of her other recommendations relate to a re-jig of PSMA Australia.

 

In her report, Lawrence argues that despite having an excellent raft of policies, Australia is a niggardly consumer of spatial data. The market is much smaller that it should be; the use of the data is much more expensive than it should be. It underpins less government decision-making than is ideal.

To a large extent, she identifies the performance of PSMA as the central issue.

 

PSMA's role is to create consistent national datasets out of data gathered by the states. She says this role is insufficiently valued by its shareholders.

She explicitly warns against any move to close PSMA. However imperfect, it is better than nothing. She says things would be improved by a more aggressive stance from ANZLIC in providing leadership for PSMA. The ANZLIC council is currently considering this, but has not yet announced any changes to the way it will do business.

 

In part, PSMA's problems are due to a lack of money. With just over $6 million in turnover, PSMA is not a large organisation. It needs to get bigger, and she has urged stakeholders to invest more money in it, and to improve its distribution mechanisms.

 

She also noted that senior executives in the industry expressed a degree of frustration with PSMA out of all proportion to its size. She attributes this is part to a frustration with the state of nationally consistent data.

 

If there are to be changes in the way PSMA operates, she says a new direction should be underpinned by a market survey to establish the requirements for national data.

 

She wants to see common standards and licencing introduced for the collection and updating of the data, quality requirements for each dataset and regular audits of all PSMA data.

 

In other areas, Lawrence recommends that a whole-of-government licence should negotiated to facilitate data sharing, as part of a scheme that would recognise that some spatial data should be free and some paid for.

 

The Final Report by Dr Vanessa Lawrence CB on the Investigation into the Spatial Capability of Australia, and the Australian Government's response to the Report, are now available on the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism website at http://www.ret.gov.au/Department/osp/lawrence-review/Pages/isca.aspx