Comments on GIScussions: Cambridge Economists present problem to Government...

Hi CharlesBeen a little out of touch with FOD site...

2008-03-31T22:22:00.001Z

Hi Charles

Been a little out of touch with FOD site recently. Just read the comment ping pong this evening. Will try to dive in with a few pearls of my own in the next couple of days.
However a quick run through the calculations suggests that the assumptions are robust even if the values for the multiplier effect and elasticity have been significantly overstated. In other words the economic gain argument will stand up although the spectacular numbers may disappear. For example if the elasticity and multiplier are set to 1 the gain is about £20m which is barely sufficient to upset the appple cart. Note I am not saying that values of 1 are more reasonable than the ones chosen in the report. I need to check my calcs as it is getting late and I may have boobed and then I will post to your site.

Cheers

Hi Steven..you wrote.."Increasing public expenditu...

2008-03-31T10:13:00.000Z

Hi Steven..

you wrote..
"Increasing public expenditure in the current economic environment may not be top of the Treasury's agenda. Could this be one for the long grass?"

DBERR already seems to have, judging by its response in our story http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/20/freeourdata.politics : “The underlying principle will be that information collected for public purposes will be made available at a price that balances the need for access while ensuring customers pay a fair contribution to the cost of collecting this information.”

Basically ignoring the whole study. There's actually a quite heated debate going on at the FOD blog after we looked at whether a Land Registry per-transaction surcharge could do the job (it could, cheaply). One commenter is saying this ignores other costs...