The need for citizen self-services and increased transparency, combined with reduction around costs and inefficiency are driving wider mainstream adoption of location-based data, and fuelling the appetite for geospatial data on-demand in the UK public sector, according to Pitney Bowes Business Insight, the leading global provider of location intelligence, data management and customer communication management solutions.

The requirements of the 2009 INSPIRE regulations mean that all public authorities and public data holders are required by the end of 2010 to record specific location-based data in an online register. The INSPIRE Directive mandates how public sector organisations across Europe should share geospatial data, and is estimated to be worth $243 million per annum. Spatial Data Infrastructure is made much easier and simpler via Cloud Computing-based delivery models, driving adoption of data on-demand type solutions in the public sector.

“Many local authorities already have huge existing investments in mapping and GIS applications,” said Scott Robinson, Director, Global Data Products, Pitney Bowes Business Insight. “For the most part, these have largely been used internally. Now, they must expose these assets to citizens via their local websites. From a citizen-centric perspective, users are demanding access to ever better and more efficient services that meet their needs and make interaction with central and local government organisations and agencies easier. From a government-centric perspective, the straitened economic climate means that public sector budget cutbacks are a reality. Greater inclination at policy-making level for increased transparency in government, combined with government organisations and agencies in search of innovative new ways to eliminate inefficiency and cut back on spending is driving citizen self-service applications around location data.”

The need for location-based data has fundamentally shifted from departmental, internal business requests to global mainstream consumer consumption. Organisations realise that their customers and citizens now want to use, visualise or express location-based data in an ever increasing number of ways. The market’s growing and voracious consumer appetite means that customers want to consume location data whenever and wherever they want, on demand, twenty four hours a day, in the right form, and right sized for their specific requests.

Pitney Bowes Business Insight is addressing this critical requirement for geospatial data on-demand as part of its ground-breaking new Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) solutions, specifically designed to help organisations meet the challenges of the new market demands for location data, and provide an affordable economic delivery model through a centralised iTunes style marketplace. The new DaaS solutions are part of the company’s ongoing initiative of developing solutions that enable organisations to unlock the value of their data assets, and integrate the benefits of location intelligence with the underlying core disciplines of CRM in order to drive deeper insight that improves competitiveness and business performance.