Minutes from the second Steering Group Meeting

8 March 1999, Pentland House Edinburgh.

1. Welcome and Introductions
2. Review of draft consultation document “Call for Tenders”
3. Proposed next steps
4. New Title
5. Date of next meeting
6. Summary of Actions
7. List of Attendees

Abbreviations and acronyms:	EO Environmental Organization	OP Ortho-Photograph	SG Steering Group
AP Aerial Photograph	LCS Land Cover of Scotland	OR Ortho-rectified	SO Scottish Office

1 Review of Actions from the last Steering Group meeting

• All members of the SG to identify potential users or survey respondents and to inform Lex Comber.
  • Response: COSLA has sent in details of local authority GIS and AP users
• Lex Comber to devise a user surveys to identify aerial photography and ortho-photo use.
  • Response: The proposed user survey can be viewed here.
    The discussion started with a review of the draft survey prepared as a result of the Actions from the last meeting. Some issues were raised:
    • - Scale varies with different uses so there is a need to ask about the range of scales that are used and would like to be used;
    • - Colour not mentioned;
    • - Survey has a role to get customer or to get information , perhaps as a pre-awareness campaign within the SO;
    • - Mapping rather than AP.
    It was suggested that a seminar demonstrating the potential uses of a national AP coverage would be a good method to raise awareness within the SO. When combined with the results of the call for tenders, there would be two pieces of information that could be taken forward and used to get more people into the consortium.
    The point was made that if you want to know the potential user interest then proper market research needs to be conducted, with associated costs.
• Derek Nicol, Ed Mackey, Stuart Gardner and Ian Pearmain are to investigate potential European Community monies for this project.
  • Response: the potential for European and Lottery funding can be viewed here.
• Dick Birnie and Diana Murray are to draw up the initial costings, conditions and specifications (technical and managerial) for a tender document as part of the Business Plan.
  • Response: The draft call for tenders can be viewed here.

2 Review of draft consultation document “Call for Tenders”

• Two types of possible funding models were discussed:
  • Model 1: a small consortium of core SO bodies who fund AP acquisition.
    • Firstly this would give the commercial companies an opportunity to “sell-on” to other users, that in turn could provide a source of revenue for a sinking fund for future products and coverages. Secondly, there would be the inducement for the contractor to do the flying at cost, with the profits to come from the extensive sell-on potential.
    • Features:
      • - High profit opportunities for commercial partner
      • - High sinking fund opportunities
    • Discussion
      • - £600k and 5 or so organizations is easier to organize and to find. The risk is whether the OR gets completed.
      • - Commercial companies can reach markets that EO's (“let the sellers sell”).
  • Model 2: a wide consortium with as many members as possible.
    • The aim would to get as many people “on board” as possible to cover the costs of the whole project. The rationale was that it would be easier to get lots of organizations to chip in smaller amounts of money than to have a few large ones with large funding commitments, which then require business plans, cost benefit analyses, and so on. If the (rough) cost was £3m for everything to OP, and the cash input to be £20,000 from each organization, then 150 organizations are needed to sign up to the project (the numbers of participants can be halved and the cost doubled).
    • Features:
      • - Cheap product for all involved
      • - The project is run by subscription
    • Discussion
      • - 150 organizations and £3m is a lot to find. 
      • One of the commercial companies recounted their experience of a consortium of 13 bodies contributing was £2k-£5k each for a similar project with a (geographically) smaller remit. The original consortium collapsed due to all the participating organizations having different needs, and resulted in 5 or so organizations forming the cornerstone bodies that paid for the flying. Those that dropped out came in later under a tiered licensing arrangement. 
      • This was countered by the comment that people buy into the package and do not influence the way that it is done. If the user base is wide enough then the sinking fund is not needed - the whole thing is run by subscription.
      • A risk is that we do not know the extent of the potential user base.
      • - The “Public Good” is served – as many as possible would have access to the data. 
      • - Low profit
      • - Low sinking fund opportunities.

The view of the commercial companies was that the context within which they were being asked to tender was for a marketing event and they felt that the interested parties ought to commit themselves financially and in terms of their technical specifications.

• The view of the Environmental Organizations was that:
  • - they could not approach the SO without a costed plan 
  • - the SO felt that they have never had fully costed proposals
  • - so close to the election for the new Scottish Parliament is not a good time to be asking the SO for £3m
  • - the EO’s cannot do anything without the SO support and an opportunity could be being missed now
  • - the word in the SO is that there will be money available but not £2m
  • - The Forestry Commission stated that they are ready to commit to the project now.
• The direction of the discussion tended towards two things:
  1. Tender document
  2. Seminar

3 Proposed next steps

ACTION 1 Points of clarification on the tender proposal are to be submitted to Lex Comber.

ACTION 2 The most important thing was seen to be to write a paper to the SO to lay out the options to several people and departments. The point was then made that they would want costs (!). So the paper should include where we are at the moment (i.e. who uses AP), rough costings, and possible models. The paper should be passed to each of the agencies represented on the SG and after comments, passed up to the respective Chief Executives with the recommendation that it is passed on to the individual responsible for funding allocations for their agency.

ACTION 3 This should be followed up with a (high profile) seminar at the SO to demonstrate the potential of a national AP coverage to increased SO awareness. This would enable the benefits of such a project to be perceived beyond the environmental sector – education, industry, health, energy, planning etc.
Some in points in conjunction with this action were made:
- No-one on the SG is a policy maker and we would need to find the SO view on this proposed project, in the wider sense
- We would want to avoid the fate of the similar initiatives that have tried to stimulate the SO that failed to get any endorsement from policy makers and ended up in a political vacuum. The view was that we have to look critically at the problem and not assume the SO needs. We need to engage with the SO to get an approach.

ACTION 4 Develop an approach and devise a list of the “hot topics” in the SO departments where AP might be used. E.g. land reform, ownership and AP, rural partnership.

ACTION 5 Send images with the survey and demonstrate a package on the SO Intranet.

ACTION 6 Commercial companies are to put loose quotes in for the project. The companies are going to come back with specific (rough) costing of the project as outlined in costs.doc.

ACTION 7 Look at the call for tenders and get the comments back to Lex in 2 weeks.

ACTION 8 The procedures and legal standing around such things as crown copyright and the legal position of EO’s need to be established. Who would be the legal signatory of any accepted tender? SNIFFER was mentioned as a possible overseer of the project, but would that involve AP of NI as well?

4 New Title

- was not resolved.

5 Date of next meeting

– to be announced.

6 Summary of Actions

Actions	Respondent
1 Points of clarification on tender proposal	All
2 Paper to SO	MLURI
3 Organize a seminar at Victoria Quay	MLURI, Joyce Hunnam
4 Develop an approach	Dick Birnie, Diana Murray
5 Provide example imagery fro the survey	NRSC & Aerofilms, TGI
6 Provide costings for the project	NRSC & Aerofilms, TGI
7 Respond to the draft call for tenders	All
8 Establish EO and SG legal position	Diana Murray
Actions from First SG	Respondent
Forward names of people and organizations to be surveyed to Lex Comber	All
Give comments on the survey	All

7 Attendees

Names	Organisation
Diana Murray	RCAHMS
John Bell	MLURI
Dick Birnie	MLURI
Ian Pearmain	COSLA
Lex Comber	MLURI
Alun Jones	The GeoInformation Group
Lindsay Simmons	Aerofilms Limited
Grant Sinclair	Ordnance Survey
Peter Singleton	SEPA
Helen Stannard	NRSC Ltd
Dave Stewart	Forestry Commission
Sue Leadbeater	MLURI
Ed Mackey	SNH
Joyce Hunnam	SO