Odds and Ends #33: Saluting our Millennium Bug heroes

Plus Masters of the Air, an eCall update – and some PAF news (of course)

Thank god these heroes didn’t have to pass basic training.

Hello! It’s time for Odds and Ends, your mini newsletter-within-a-newsletter rounding up any stray observations and the most interesting links I’ve seen this week.

This week – I’m very sorry about this – we have yet more Postcode Address File content up first (it’s a busy time for PAF liberation!). But after that we’ve got a short follow-up on the Millennium Bug from earlier this week, and some fantastic news about the in-car eCall technology I wrote about a few months ago. Plus – my take on Masters of the Air.

So continue reading to find out which side I wanted to win World War II – and for much more!

Freeing the PAF will (probably) be debated in Parliament this forthcoming week

Three (!) bits of Postcode Address File news to start this week:

First, an update on the Lords amendment that could finally free the Postcode Address File.

Sadly the Grand Committee didn’t get around to discussing the amendment last week as we hoped – but our expectation is that it will make it on to the agenda in one of the sessions this week, probably on either Monday 25th (starting at 4pm) or Wednesday 27th (starting at 1pm). So make sure you tune in for that – and once again I’ll be attempting to live tweet on my Twitter account, @Psythor.

Secondly, as previously mentioned, the other exciting recent development is that former Cabinet Minister Francis Maude, who led the coalition’s digital government efforts, has jumped on board and backed the amendment¹. This is a massive deal, as it means we now have the backing of senior Peers from four major parties!

And thirdly, the Open Data Institute has published its “policy manifesto”, essentially collecting together its policy asks from the parties for the next election.

The document as a whole is full of tonnes of good stuff, but this one particular paragraph caught my eye:

An obvious dataset to open up is the Postcode Address File, which the ODI has been calling for for over a decade. This was sold off, with the Royal Mail, in 2013, a decision described by parliament’s Public Administration Select Committee as ‘a mistake. Public access to public sector data must never be sold or given away again’. Address data has significant economic value – a 2012 report on the PAF estimated its value to the UK economy to be between £992 million and £1.32 billion each year. Campaigners to ‘free the PAF’ have suggested practical steps for how it could be done.

This is great to see, as the ODI were one of the groups calling for the liberation of the PAF way back during the first push for it to happen around 2009 – so to see it reiterate the call here (and kindly linked to my Substack), underscores how the issue is more important than ever.

So here’s hoping that before next week’s Committee meeting that Viscount Jonathan Camrose, the DSIT Minister in the Lords, will listen carefully to the arguments and accept the amendment. Let’s get PAF done!

Anyway, that’s enough postcodes for now. Here’s some other, non-postcode-related things that you might find interesting: