United Kingdom Hydrographic Office - Access To Data and Criticisms

Access To Data and Criticisms

As with the Ordnance Survey for land mapping, the Hydrographic Office possesses a government monopoly on data for nautical charts and publications in the UK, while, although a part of the Ministry of Defence, also acts as a Trading Agency or commercial entity. This means that it is supposed to be totally self-funding from the commercial sale of its data and derived products - whilst at the same time it is supposed to be the public supplier of information. In 2010/11 it made a profit of almost £22 million from its commercial activities. These issues are very different to those of the Ordnance Survey where data is gathered at public expense. The UKHO sources much of its information from foreign governments to whom it pays a royalty fee and thus is no burden on the UK taxpayer.

The UKHO has a complex set of licences, according to the use of the product and its value. Whilst it generally allows use for non-navigational purposes at little or no cost, where licencing is for use in a navigational product (which can obviously compete with its core commercial activities), a higher licence fee is charged. Furthermore there are some data sets that it uses in its own products that it refuses to make available to other organisations.

In the Information Fair Trader Scheme Report on the UKHO in April 2011 it states that the UKHO data will not be included in the Public Data Corporation to make government owned data more freely available (part 3, item 29), but it does recommend that the UKHO implements a "Free Navigational Licence" (part 3, item 37).