The Office of Fair Trading has published a report presenting the conclusions of its market study into the use and commercial re-use of information collected, stored and disseminated by public bodies. This report includes as Annexes two reports compiled by DotEcon. The first of these describes the operations of six case study public sector information holders (namely Companies House, the Ordnance Survey, the Met Office, the UK Hydrographic Office, HM Court’s Service and the British Geological Survey), assesses the extent and nature of competitive pressures upon them at different stages of their operations, and examines the extent and effectiveness of cost allocation mechanisms and pricing policies in place. Using data collected by the OFT during the course of the market study, the second report quantifies the current economic value of public sector information to the UK and the likely scale of detriment given the operations and behaviour of public sector information holders.
The OFT’s full report and Annexes can be downloaded from the OFT’s website. The two DotEcon reports are available from the publications page of our web site.