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The Mapping Services Agreement (MSA) is a licensing
contract
A contract is an agreement that specifies certain legally enforceable rights and obligations pertaining to two or more parties. A contract typically involves consent to transfer of goods, services, money, or promise to transfer any of thos ...
between
local authorities
Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of governance or public administration within a particular sovereign state.
Local governments typically constitute a subdivision of a higher-level political or administrative unit, such a ...
in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
and suppliers of
geographic data
Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth (a geographic location or geographic position). It is also ca ...
. Most of its contents are covered by commercial in confidence requirements. The general outcome of the MSA, however, is the supply of geographic data to local authorities and the defining of licensing issues regarding address data.
The MSA replaced an existing agreement for the supply of geographic data between local authorities, police, fire and other emergency services, and the national mapping agency,
Ordnance Survey
The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see Artillery, ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of ...
(OS). It also complied with
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
rules on procurement. As a result, suppliers of geographic information had to go through a process of open procurement managed on behalf of local authorities by the IDeA, an umbrella government organisation coordinating and promoting local authority good practice.
The result was that three suppliers were selected: Ordnance Survey, Intermap and Intelligent Addressing. For local authorities this meant little change in the supply of mapping data which continued to be supplied by OS. Intermap, however, supplied height data not previously covered by other arrangements.
Perhaps the most significant outcome of the MSA is the resolution of ownership, licensing and royalty issues that had existed between local authorities and OS. In the agreement the address databases (called Local Land and Property Gazetteers – LLPG) maintained by local authorities acknowledged the partial input of OS's address product, Address Point to these databases. In effect local authorities became "value added resellers" of ADDRESS-POINT and are required to pay OS royalties for the proportion of their use of the OS product.
The agreement also puts into place funding for the
National Land and Property Gazetteer
The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) is an initiative in England and Wales to provide a definitive and consistent address infrastructure. Up until recently Great Britain has not held a single list of all addresses in the country, meaning ...
(NLPG), the UK's national address infrastructure, which is made up of the LLPGs compiled by local authorities. It also enables the NLPG to compel local authorities to maintain their LLPGs and thus ensure the nationwide coverage and compliance by local authorities.
The Mapping Services Agreement contract expired on 31 March 2012 and was replaced by the Data Co-operation Agreement.