Corporate report

Geospatial Commission: Board of Commissioners meeting 30 January 2024

Published 23 July 2024

Geospatial Commission Board of Commissioners’ Meeting 29

30 January 2024

1 Horseguards Road, London

Attendees

Commissioners:

Alex Notay
Bernard Silverman (Chair)
Gabriel Straub
Sarah Hodgetts
Steve Unger

Nominated Commissioners:

Peter Sparkes
Dave Tomaney (online)
Nick Bolton

Commission Unit:

Abigail Page
Catherine Carter-McGrath
Chris Chambers
Claire Eagle
Claire Wimpenny
Jamie Clark
Tulsi Makwana
Paddy Vanderpant
Will Jones

Observers:

Alan Corbett (Scotland, online)
Glyn Jones (Wales, online)
Suzanne McLaughlin (Northern Ireland, online)

Apologies: Louise Heathwaite

Action	Owner	Deadline
1. Share a concept note for the International Conference	Jamie Clark	End of February
2. Recommend some expert facilitators for the international conference	Alex Notay	End of February
3. Arrange session with the Commissioner’s on National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) Plus	Chris Chambers	End of February
4. Direct Paddy to some relevant frameworks for measuring impact	Alex Notay	End of February
5. Creation of a stakeholder comms map	Will Jones/Chris Chambers	End of March
6. Creation of a communications content plan	Will Jones/Chris Chambers	End of March
7. Draft the next Board agenda giving indication of tentative location	Claire Wimpenny	End of February

1. Welcome, Minutes and Matters Arising

1.1. Welcome to those in the room and online. Minutes from October Board Meeting were approved with no further comments

1.2. No comments on commissioner recruitment the Board were happy to leave that in the hands of Sarah and team to navigate the process.

1.3. Gabriel Straub (GS) noted that the focus of the International Conference had changed. Jamie responded that we were broadening the topics to enable a policy discussion and the agenda would be more outcome focused rather than just focusing on tech.

1.4 Peter set out the interim arrangements that would cover his role both as the CEO of United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) and the Nominated Commissioner representative when he moves on to take up a new role as CEO of the RNLI in May, and as such this would be his last meeting. The Board thanked Peter for his service and offered him their best wishes for his next role.  

1.5. Action 1: The Geospatial Commission will share a concept note for the International Conference no later than the end of February 

1.6. Action 2: Alex Notay (AN) offered to recommend some expert facilitators

1.7. Action 3: Chris offered to run session with the Commissioner’s on NUAR Plus

2. Report from the Nominated Commissioners

2.1. The group had not managed to meet this time around but that would be resolved going forwards with the Nominated Commissioner group to own the Partner Body meetings.

2.2. The group are keen to feedback on the use of AI and how we can collaborate going forwards. This is especially relevant as UKHO have a new CTO that started in December.

2.3. They noted the Turing Institute comments in the Land Use paper and are thinking about which people in OS have an interest so that a working group can be formed.

2.4. The two nominated commissioners represent Ordnance Survey (OS) and UKHO and that arrangement will continue another year. Though it was noted that Peter will be handing over to Dave Tomaney when he leaves UKHO in May.

2.5. UKHO looks forward to hosting the Geospatial Commission (GC) on 12th March and would welcome other commissioners to attend if interested. It would be a good opportunity to align on marine and land use planning.

3. Devolved Administration Update

3.1. Glynn Jones (Welsh Government) noted on the Earth Observation pilot that good progress had been made on engaging with partners and they were feeding into the Geospatial Commission pilot on that.

3.2. A big topic in Wales has been the change in legislation to make urban roads restricted to a 20 mph speed limit, whereby geospatial information is a key part of that policy, in particular to help find out where the roads were. The next steps are seeing how this change is affecting the traffic and seeing if Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA) data can be used to help.

3.3. Wales are working closely with the NUAR team and Asset Owners to streamline dataflows and working with Asset owners.

3.4. Other topics relevant to Wales were: Scenario testing with land use owners, national parks, crowdsourcing for Electric Vehicle (EV) charging points.

3.5. Alan Corbett (Scottish Government) noted the discussions with OS on developing methodology around tall buildings. There has been a push with ministers getting this through Parliament and the focus is now looking at the governance around this model.

3.6. Scottish Government (SG) just completed the invitation to tender for the Location Data Scotland project and would be happy to share information around that with GC. They are looking forward to year 4 as there is a lot still to achieve and a lot of start-ups are doing interesting things.

3.7. SG are piloting a course targeting people aged 16-18 to get them into digital careers in the geospatial industry. It is being rolled out in Fife in the Summer, but the idea is to roll it out nationally in 5-6 technology colleges.

3.8. SG noted other pilots are being led to stimulate agricultural opportunities and partnerships across the sectors. There were 75 people involved but they felt this could have been expanded to more.

3.9. On a slightly more negative note, there had been close down on the planning transformation project. £20 million was the allocation but the project has been stopped. So SG are looking at what can be salvaged of the project.

3.10. Suzanne McLaughlin from NI talked about the work on the government land and property project. It has been agreed that it will move into a business as usual (BAU) phase

3.11. There is an ongoing pilot on land use in Londonderry which really starts in April and will feed into land use work for the GC.

3.12. A priority for NI is income generation and savings which requires them to step up the use of geospatial.

4. Report from the Director of the Commission

4.1. Sarah Hodgetts (SH) gave background that the GC has had a challenging period of change over the past year.

4.2. SH reported on recent interactions with ministers. Minister Griffiths is interested in the Commission and Minister Camrose is particularly keen on seeing demos that bring projects to life. He would like the Commission to work on an effective international strategy to maintain and improve the UK’s reputation.

4.3. SH delivered a progress update on the GC strategy per the Delivery Report paper 29.02 and asked the Board whether these types of updates would be useful going forward.

4.4. SU noted it was good to see the dashboard to have a sense of where we are on delivery and he echoed Sarah’s points about a difficult migration which he had seen in Building Digital UK (BDUK) (ex-Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)) too.

4.5. GS was keen to understand the bigger picture that the GC are trying to work towards and how the commissioners contribute towards that

4.6. Alex Notay (AN) highlighted that the GC need to own the space and narrative around what we want to achieve.

4.7. Bernard Silverman (BS) offered support in talking to people across the GC to help increase engagement. 

5. Measuring Impact 

5.1. Paddy Vanderpant (PV) presented the paper on Measuring Impact, which set out the approach that the Geospatial Commission takes to assessing its impact. The paper and introduction gave an overview of the Commission’s achievements and commitments met since 2018. The paper also discussed the framework the analysis team use when considering impact.

Action 4: AN offered to direct Paddy to some relevant frameworks for measuring impact.

5.2 The Board discussed the challenges in reviewing system change, quantifying societal benefits, and quantifying economic value. The Board considered what lessons the GC could take forward in relation to the impact of specific types of intervention, and where approaches assessing impact could be shared across the Geo6 and GC.

5.3. Other themes discussed included: how external impact frameworks could support government impact frameworks, how investments have been made strategically in visible areas, how impact needs to be directly linked to the original objectives of the project, the need for coordination with the Global Environment Outlook 6 (Geo6) when measuring impact, the need to explain the impact of geospatial in plain English, and the need to better explain the counterfactual or ‘do nothing’ scenario.

6. Land Use

6.1. Claire Eagle (CE) presented the paper on the next phase of the National Land           Data Programme. The paper provided an update on the work done since the last board meeting, including extensive stakeholder engagement and research. 

6.2 The Board discussed the importance of clear messaging and engagement, given       how broad the land use community is and diverse the interests. The Board                    noted the benefits of developing a range of approaches.

6.3. The Board also discussed the work being done to address data access and               interoperability, building on the data product specification developed during the first phase of the programme.  

6.4. Representatives from the DAs noted the work they were doing that aligned                with the goals of the work being done in the GC.

7. Population Movement Data

7.1. Abigail Page (AP) presented the paper on the Population Movement Data                  Programme (PMD) and outlined the progress that had been made since the Board             discussion in July 2023.  

7.2.This included practical innovations to test with partners, as well as developing a         long-term commercial approach and considering appropriate use of the data.  The       Board discussed the challenges of data sharing, and the different approaches that           might be taken by data owners when engaging with government.  It was noted that the programme as outlined does not include testing the uses of PMD data for an                    island national, including its role in sea trade and ports.  

8. Communications Update

8.1. Will Jones (WJ) presented the Communications update.

8.2. Action 5:AN noted good progress from last year but a good thing to see would be a stakeholder map to make sure nobody is missed. It is hard to position communications if you don’t know the audience to go for.

8.3. Action 6: AN would also like to see a content plan that’s clearer to enable making introductions at the right time.

8.4. SU said it was positive to see the impact we have had with the announcements. But it’s the strategic question we need to answer i.e. do we want the general public to know who GC is or is its more for ministers, sectors etc.

8.5. BS said the GC should make use of all the commissioners in order to emphasise the Commission’s  identity. Thinks we should be more ambitious and more expansive about putting it out there so that the Commission becomes well known. That was a personal objective of success when Bernard started out as a commissioner and he doesn’t feel we have done enough of that.

8.7. AN noted that the Finding Common Ground report was really good and we could have benefitted from taking a more planned approach and spreading the communication out over a year, not just at the time of the launch. We now have the ability to disseminate content on repeat.

8.8. WJ said apart from NUAR, most of our content is on niche websites and we must work for it. AN responded that’s where the commissioners can help to secure broader coverage.

8.9. NB said OS can offer some resources that have been successfully used.

9. Any Other Business

9.1. BS congratulated NUAR on the legislation progress. CC said the next big question on this is devolved administrations

9.2. SH flagged that the GC is starting preparation for the Spending Review.

9.3. Action 7: BS asked that the GC draft the next Board agenda soon and give more indication of tentative location and time within the next two weeks