Map and data licencing is a must - are you up-to-date?

There is currently a lot of financial pressure to cut corners, licencing is something you cannot afford to be without. Data managers, particularly in large environmental consultancies, are responsible for ensuring legitimate data use and must be aware of the consequences of failing to do so.

Why is this so important? Well maintaining an up-to-date licence is a legal requirement for use of data from Ordnance Survey, Environment Agency and many other providers. Not having the correct licence could invalidate indemnity insurance and result in costly legal fees. Dan Hughes, Ordnance Survey Land and Property sector manager, comments: “The benefits of ensuring data is appropriately licensed are numerous; for example reducing the risk of decisions based on out of date data or maintaining professional reputations. A system that can support the end user monitor their licences and their obligations helps them to reduce their overall risk.”

FIND recognises the importance of maintaining data licensing and have developed a tool to help data managers. Our new Expired Data Licence Management Tool means all data purchased is logged and monthly email reminders are sent whenever a data licence has expired. Licences for data can then be re-purchased and re-download, or just declared that they have been deleted or archived.

Ultimately, this new tool helps organisations demonstrate transparent licencing during audits for hundreds of datasets they may hold. It does this by allowing a company to centrally manage and track data licenses, as well as be informed of when they are due to expire, and quickly renew licenses as necessary.

FIND’s cost effective data licence management tool is completely free to use; simply log in to view expired data licenses. The tool tracks over 100 different datasets available through FIND that need licences. It displays an entire data export history on one page, this can be filtered to show individual users or results for a whole company. This functionality ads to our existing easy renewal and purchase of Ordnance Survey Paper Map Copy and Plan Design Build licences.

Let us know your experiences with keeping up-to-date with licencing.

Detailed product information on Expired Data Licence Management Tool
Detailed product information on Ordnance Survey Paper Map Copy Licence
Detailed product information on OS MasterMap with Plan Design Build licence