Co-ordinating the sharing of spatial data in the UK

Pauline Athene Pollard

300 Pages ()

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of the West of England, Bristol for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Submitted September 2006

Faculty of Environment and Technology

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the sharing of geographic information in the UK focusing on the development of a definitive address dataset as a key information resource. It provides an interpretive longitudinal in-depth case study approach based on Walsham (1993) using direct observation, interviews and documents as sources of evidence. It tells an actor-centred story of the development of national address datasets since the early 1990s, placing this within the wider context of European, UK, regional and local public sector information policy.

Within this interpretive method, the thesis uses an information polity framework derived from Bellamy and Taylor’s (1998) institutionalist approach to analyse the case account and explain the influences that shape the address datasets. It identifies a struggle for power and control over the development of address holdings between public sector information domains: a central government map provider developing an ad hoc dataset in accordance with its commercial imperative and a local government data provider developing a definitive dataset to enable service planning and delivery. It considers how the network influences on these domains shaped their address holdings, the implications of the underlying rules of the game embedded in the systems, and the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in reinforcing institutional biases.

It concludes that the institutional shaping of address datasets is based on an automating paradigm that has its roots in the 1980s and that this paradigm continues to shape the trajectory of the address datasets in 2005. It observes two information domains engaged in the development of address datasets: a functionally-driven map producer acting commercially to develop address data to recover its costs in map production and a geographically dispersed local authority domain aiming to create a consistent standards-based dataset within an information society model. It identifies information age disjunctures between the approach of the map agency and the approach of local government that have implications for the nature and pace of change.

The research provides empirical evidence to support an information polity approach lending weight to Bellamy and Taylor’s (ibid) hypothesis that changes in ICTs are institutionally shaped, and can therefore be expected to be gradual.

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