Speakers Bio & Abstract

Biography
Keiran Millard is a Standards Consultant with BSI Group, a global standards organisations and the UK National Standards Body. Prior to joining BSI he worked as a consultant in the marine and environmental sectors. He has over 20 years’ experience in geospatial data, data standards and practical implementation of commercial data services.Abstract
Standards and Business Models for sustainable growth in the Data MarketIf we are serious about a vibrant data market and the realisation of a European Digital Single Market we need to think more about the standards in that market and the role they play. The geospatial data market is vast, touching all aspects of what we do and yet is largely unregulated. Some will shudder at the word regulation, but regulation could provide the catalyst for market growth; all regulation does is set standards and measure compliance against them. This is not a bad thing. What we are looking at here is the inter-relation between GI data services, standards for the business delivering these data services and what this means in the context of commercial models. When we think about standards for data services the tendency is to focus on the technical interoperability standards that make service delivery possible. However sustainable business delivery requires adherence to a far greater range of standards, not least to meet the quality, trust, security, ethical and privacy expectations of its customers. This is key to the geospatial market as data largely has no direct value. The open data initiative to widen data access means the value of data is in the context of the information services it underpins. This is good in that it creates a low barrier of entry for both innovation and commercial suppliers, but has the paradox of creating confusion for customers, making it hard for them to build trust in the supply in this emerging market.