LINZ to invest millions in data service
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GM customer service says govt agencies prefer to source data directly
By Randal Jackson | Wellington | Thursday, 31 March, 2011 | 4 Comments
Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) will commit $3.1 million over six years to establish and support the LINZ Data Service.
LINZ general manager customer services Jan Pierce announced the investment at this week’s GIS senior executive summit held by Eagle Technology.
Pierce says agencies currently pay around $10,000 to $20,000 per year for LINZ and other data.
“The research we undertook indicated that there are 68 local and central government agencies that currently use third parties but would prefer to source their data directly from LINZ,” she said.
“This is projected to result in efficiency savings of between $680,000 and $1.3 million per year across government.”
The benefits of establishing the Data Service suggested a return of 10:1 through removing access barriers.
“This is likely to show an increase in the market in a range of $4-7 million per year.
“Through the LINZ Data Service, we will have an exemplar data service, with access barriers removed from LINZ datasets.
“No matter how accurate your data is, it’s of no value if locked away and out of the reach of a wider community.”
LINZ will release the datasets using a web service.
Comments
LINZ data service: Flawed assumptions
At the Eagle Summit for Senior Executives attended recently (another great Summit-well done Eagle!) a paper was presented by LINZ by Jan Pierce outlining the investment of $3 million over 6 years in the LINZ data service, and "projected efficiency savings of between $600k and $1.3 million per year across government".
Based on the LINZ information presented it is very easy to see by those in the industry that the benefits and projected efficiency saving calculations are somewhat flawed and misleading, and appear to be based on a fundamental lack of understanding of the marketplace and what the agencies require and are actually purchasing.
LINZ indicate that their research showed "68 agencies currently pay $10k -$20k per year for LINZ and other data and purchase this data through 3rd parties but would prefer to purchase directly from LINZ" and that by purchasing this data through the LINZ data Service therefore will result in a "projected efficiency savings of between $680k and $1.3 million per year across government"
Herein lies the issues with their numbers: The research assumes the data (predominately centred around CRS) supplied by 3rd parties is the same data that will be supplied by LINZ on the LINZ data service, and that 3rd party suppliers are taking a currently available (and currently available to agencies) $500 CRS data set and charging $10k-$20k for it per year by changing formats etc and converting it to a more user friendly form. Wrong!
A quick survey of the major 3rd party suppliers to these agencies all showed a similar pricing model for supplying straight CRS in the format specs etc that these agencies require is typically between $300 to $3000 per year for the vast majority of supplies to customers. (Note in a competitive marketplace one supplier would not be able to charge $10-20k when others were charging $300-$3000).
So what are the 68 agencies paying $10k-$20k per year for? Not straight CRS or any other base LINZ data. Instead, they are paying for additional data, corrected CRS and improvements to the LINZ data. For example, we would be supplying, as a 3rd party, a number of these 68 agencies. We do not supply them straight CRS. Instead we supply them CRS enhanced with our Terramatch IP which a) corrects the CRS data, b) provides a vastly improved match of title to spatial parcel match (approx 60% better than LINZ and c) provides a further additional data set match.
This is what the customers are paying for. Other 3rd party providers make other degrees of quality improvements or provide additional services.
Posted by Mike Donald at 11:59:13 on April 4, 2011
Based on the LINZ information presented it is very easy to see by those in the industry that the benefits and projected efficiency saving calculations are somewhat flawed and misleading, and appear to be based on a fundamental lack of understanding of the marketplace and what the agencies require and are actually purchasing.
LINZ indicate that their research showed "68 agencies currently pay $10k -$20k per year for LINZ and other data and purchase this data through 3rd parties but would prefer to purchase directly from LINZ" and that by purchasing this data through the LINZ data Service therefore will result in a "projected efficiency savings of between $680k and $1.3 million per year across government"
Herein lies the issues with their numbers: The research assumes the data (predominately centred around CRS) supplied by 3rd parties is the same data that will be supplied by LINZ on the LINZ data service, and that 3rd party suppliers are taking a currently available (and currently available to agencies) $500 CRS data set and charging $10k-$20k for it per year by changing formats etc and converting it to a more user friendly form. Wrong!
A quick survey of the major 3rd party suppliers to these agencies all showed a similar pricing model for supplying straight CRS in the format specs etc that these agencies require is typically between $300 to $3000 per year for the vast majority of supplies to customers. (Note in a competitive marketplace one supplier would not be able to charge $10-20k when others were charging $300-$3000).
So what are the 68 agencies paying $10k-$20k per year for? Not straight CRS or any other base LINZ data. Instead, they are paying for additional data, corrected CRS and improvements to the LINZ data. For example, we would be supplying, as a 3rd party, a number of these 68 agencies. We do not supply them straight CRS. Instead we supply them CRS enhanced with our Terramatch IP which a) corrects the CRS data, b) provides a vastly improved match of title to spatial parcel match (approx 60% better than LINZ and c) provides a further additional data set match.
This is what the customers are paying for. Other 3rd party providers make other degrees of quality improvements or provide additional services.
Posted by Mike Donald at 11:59:13 on April 4, 2011
Good 2nd step
LINZ led by example nearly 10 years ago when it stopped charging for digital topographic data; I'm happy to see this 2nd step.
NZ needs a federated geospatial data service, with the authoritative source for each layer agreed. Local governments are the authoritative sources for many of our above ground (boat ramps, wharfs) and below ground (pipes) public assets. They should be contributing too.
And is it too much to ask the private sector (telcos, power, etc) to contribute their info as well? Perhaps in a secure subset.
Posted by MikePearsonNZ at 11:00:56 on April 3, 2011
NZ needs a federated geospatial data service, with the authoritative source for each layer agreed. Local governments are the authoritative sources for many of our above ground (boat ramps, wharfs) and below ground (pipes) public assets. They should be contributing too.
And is it too much to ask the private sector (telcos, power, etc) to contribute their info as well? Perhaps in a secure subset.
Posted by MikePearsonNZ at 11:00:56 on April 3, 2011
cloud is better
Agree this is a good move. A number of local councils have their own GIS / geospatial databases and systems which underperform. It would be better to have this information sourced from the data suppliers and scrubbed, matched and collated by LINZ. The TLA's shoudl have the ability to connect to and update these data sets if and as required throught an audited process. regarding infrastructure, it makes sense to move this to the cloud rather than have the infrastruture sitting at LINZ, as I believe network performance and redundancy would be better, especially if you have a number of TLA's connecting to a such a data intensive application.
Posted by henareho at 9:57:56 on April 1, 2011
Posted by henareho at 9:57:56 on April 1, 2011
Good to see
It is really good move on sourcing data at LINZ as all related GIS, but not sure how security models on sourcing all agencies data in one place. And inftrastructure is another concern. It may good to consider Cloud Computing model which allow others to use the services than go back last decade webservice model.
On the other hand, currently high performance opensource GIS servers available which could run on standard servers. So, Good to consider real benefit on central sourcing and maintaining too.
Posted by Senthil at 12:58:19 on March 31, 2011
On the other hand, currently high performance opensource GIS servers available which could run on standard servers. So, Good to consider real benefit on central sourcing and maintaining too.
Posted by Senthil at 12:58:19 on March 31, 2011
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