The platonic ideal of a tech business is that founders identify a problem, or a new way to do something, and then they set to work to make it a reality – usually with a lot of late nights and takeaway pizzas as a crucial part of the process.
The best part is that if you build something better than what came before, then it can be a catalyst for explosive growth. That’s great for not just the founders’ wallets, but also innovation and growth in the wider economy.
One of my favourite examples of this sort of innovation is CityMapper, the travel planning app. Founded way back in 2011, the company quickly carved out a niche by mashing together London’s real-time transit data to figure out your journey options – and wrapping it all together into a more attractive and informative package than the behemoth that is Google Maps.
After taking the same principles to many of the world’s top cities, the British success story finally found its exit last year, and was acquired by the American firm Via. And today, millions of people are better able to navigate their cities because of their hard work. It’s a real British success story.
However, it wasn’t just hard work and good design that was behind CityMapper’s success.
The reason CityMapper exists at all is because much of the underlying data – the train timetables, bus schedules and live location APIs – are free to access and use.
Because they are published for free by transit agencies like Transport for London, anyone can take them and build clever products on top of them – whether they are Google, a startup like CityMapper, or a bedroom coder like the guy behind the amazing real-time BusTimes map.
That’s why in my view, open data is a key to unlocking innovation. And this brings me to the Postcode Address File (PAF).
The PAF is the definitive database of UK addresses. It’s not personal data – no names or other details are included. It just contains the address of every physical building in the country.
It is an extremely useful dataset if you want to build pretty much anything that uses address data, from a simple autocomplete on a payment form, to a geospatial analysis tool for environmental data, to something much more bleeding edge, like drone delivery systems.
There’s just one problem. Unlike a lot of transport data, the PAF is currently locked behind an expensive paywall.
Anyone who wants to use PAF data on a website or in an app first needs to fork out upwards of £6,000 every single year to licence the address data from Royal Mail, which has privately maintained the database since it was privatised in 2013.
Royal Mail’s licensing terms do have some limited exceptions, such as that you’re allowed to use PAF data for free during development – but the second you hit the App Store, or move beyond your development environment, you need to pay up. And in my view, this essentially amounts to a tax on innovation, and an unjust restriction on a critical national dataset.
That’s why for the past couple of years I’ve been campaigning (mostly on my Substack) for the government to ‘take back control’ of the PAF – and release it for free so that everyone from entrepreneurs to hobbyists can use it to build and innovate.
I’ve also teamed up with technical and policy experts who have been campaigning on the issue for well over a decade now (the first serious campaign to release the PAF for free was back in the mid-2000s, pre-privatisation). And I dare say we’ve had some success at reheating the PAF issue, at least among Westminster watchers.
For example, at the end of last year, we met with Jonathan Reynolds, Labour’s shadow business secretary, to make the case. And a few weeks ago it was debated in the House of Lords, with Baroness Dido Harding, who led the “Test & Trace” operation during the pandemic backing the cause. She described the PAF as “a fundamental asset for the country and the fundamental building block of our geolocation data”.
PAF remains behind lock and key
But despite the momentum we’ve seen, as things stand the PAF remains behind lock and key, with only those rich enough to pay able to take advantage of the data. And sadly, the current government seems unwilling to do anything about it.
However, I think we’re also at a critical moment. As the next election looms over all of our politics, and with all parties desperately searching for policies that will fuel growth and productivity, now is the perfect time to put the PAF on the tech policy agenda.
I think that if we speak up loud enough, we can persuade Labour, as the likely next government, and the other parties in Parliament, about how opening up our address data can fuel innovation and growth. I think there’s a good chance that we can finally make it happen.
And this is where I think founders can play a critical role. You are the people who are building Britain’s economic future. And if you want that future to include address data we can all build and innovate with, now is the time to make some noise and join us in our call for the liberation of the Postcode Address File.
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