Information System in Ordnance Survey: An Analytical Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the information system employed by Ordnance Survey, a national mapping agency in Great Britain. It examines the company's introduction to IT, detailing its various applications such as OSMapFinder, OS Maps Web, OS Maps, and OS Locate, along with the underlying IT infrastructure. The report identifies and explores three key themes: innovation within the company, efficient delivery of public services, and the initiative of smart city development. It discusses the positive and negative aspects of each theme, highlighting how Ordnance Survey leverages its information system, particularly Geographic Information System (GIS), to offer services like route planning, land administration, and data consultancy. The report also identifies missing issues in the current information system, such as the lack of strategic planning and ambiguity in data sources, and suggests future strategies for improvement, including establishing clear policies, forming a team to track technological updates, and fostering tech competition. The conclusion underscores the importance of a robust information system for Ordnance Survey's operations and future growth.

Running Head: INFORMATION SYSTEM
Importance of Information System
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Importance of Information System in Ordnance Survey
Introduction to IT at the Company
In Great Britain, the Ordnance Survey is a famous national mapping agency. The
offerings of the company starts from route planning which is totally on the online platform,
business related to products that are depends on the access of the location, develops the digital
map data, shares the services of routing planning with consumers as well as to the government.
In the year 2013, Ordnance Survey has launched their official application named as
OSMapFinder (Ballatore and Bertolotto 2015). The application is accessible to all however, it is
not maintained by the company. The have also came up with three other application and those
are OS Maps Web, OS Maps and OS Locate. The availability of OS Map Web is on the web, the
web browser allows to access this web page, plan for a particular route and then print the route in
a hard copy (Visser 2014). This is quite similar to their mobile application. The second
application is the OS Maps, this application is accessible from both Android and iOS. The
feature of the application enables the user to have direct access from the mobile phones, planning
of the route is available and eventually recording the route and sharing it. The application is
available for free, with the feature of using it offline whenever required. The usability of the
application is independent of internet.
The wide range of services that Ordnance offers are map generalization and automated
data, services related to land administration, geospatial advisory, asset management and data
consultancy for Smart city. In order to provide these services in real time, a strong Information
Technology infrastructure is required by the company (Oloo and Van der Krapf 2015). The
various components of network and software are for the purposes of analyzing the route and
provide favorable solutions to the users. The software that the company uses of three types which

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are premium software, open source and web based software. Some examples of premium
software are RouteFinder, CadCorp, Network analyst, TRACC and Mainfols (Page, Langford
and Higgs 2019). The commonly used open source software are SmartVRP, Network X, etc.
Lastly, the web based are Mapumental, Mapbox, Graphhopper and many. It uses a large scale
dataset that contains all the information related to the analysis of the route. The network related
applications that are used by the Ordnance Survey are OS OpenRoads and OS MasterMap
Highways Network.
Identification of the Theme
Theme 1: Innovation in the company
Innovation is the continuous update in a system to bring success in the company. The
betterment of product and services in a business oriented company is called as innovation. The
concept of innovation is always associated with improvement and change (Dennis, Armitage and
James 2016). The steps towards innovation are improvements in the existing structures of the
technologies, enhancement of efficiencies, improved marketing strategies, incorporating new
designs of products, exercising better strategies of services and reaching to new customers.
One such task that have been taken-up by Ordnance Survey is to connect the connection
with the autonomous vehicles. Along with this reaching to the international customers is also a
big step towards bringing innovation into the company. As per the history of the company,
innovation is always welcomed by the employees and all the heads. In the aspect of innovation,
the introduction of new technologies will help in making difference in the betterment of the
sensors that check or monitors the quality of air and proper determination of location for several
companies, sectors of government and even for individual availing the services of the company
(Holland et al. 2016).

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The view of CIO is that for this competitive work the need to get the information about
the things are much important and this can be extracted from the data collected in the company’s
technologies (ComputerWeekly.com. 2020).
The positive aspect of this theme is that it will help several companies and emergency
situations to mitigate their problem by getting the correct data. In contrast, the negative aspect is
that innovation results in change and this may not be acceptable to all the customers of the
company.
Theme 2: Efficient delivery of public services
The delivery of products and services to the public is a huge responsibility of the
companies that are associated with the government sector. The intension to serve the people and
putting them forward is righteous choices made by any company (Wilson 2016). In the case of
Ordnance Survey Ltd., they provide solutions related to the routes of Britain, the data collected
throughout from the roads are utilized well to provide the same.
In 2015, April 1st was marked by Ordnance Survey as the government owned with total
ownership of the public. The name of the company changed to Ordnance Survey Ltd. The
company provided the industrial and energy strategies to the secretary of state in terms of several
business. So, the technologies of route analysis was used for providing services to the public too.
Miranda Sharp has also stated in her interview that they have engaged themselves with
department of government and partners to carry out several research and development activities
to make the living space smarter than before. The director of innovation of OS has also said that
they have the ambition to work on international basis to increase their exports and deliver
efficiently to the public. A team of Sharp have been associated with the CCAV to make entry in
the market of automated vehicle (Sarkar, Gallacher and Webster 2014). If we consider an

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example of automated vehicle, if a sinkhole is detected then with the aid of traffic lights the
vehicles can be diverted away from the spot. This will avoid unnecessary congestion on road.
The positive aspect of this theme is that the company is not only working for this own
profit but also for the general public. The idea of making a better world is an effective initiative
taken by the company. The negative aspect can be that all the employees or the senior officers
may not have the same aim to invest for the public sector. For any business the ultimate goal is to
make profit and then come betterment for others.
Theme 3: Initiative of Smart City
The concept of smart city came with the revolutionary introduction of technology in the
recent years (Schechtner 2017). The demand of the people living in smart cities are met by the
use of ICT at a great length. The city consists of developing technologies and automated
activities across the city. The government is also associated with those ICTs. The working
culture and daily life is aided by the application of the evolving technologies. The introduction of
smart city have integrated the knowledge of people with the innovations.
One such example of smart city is the city of Manchester. The city is supposed to have
IoT as its core operator of data collection and utilization (Anagnostopoulos et al. 2017).
The current scenario of the company is that they have been associated themselves with
collaborations of research and development with the organizations of the public sector. The
companies like Cisco, BT, etc. The aimed to obtain the data about 40000 object’s location. The
director of OS, Miss sharp has stated in her interview that they required the information of the
devices used in the smart city and integrate that with the technologies that the company have.
The devices like the beacons, sensors, signage, etc. powered by IoT. She has also reflected that

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this will enable them to provide a variety of services such as for the analysis of the quality of air,
mobility needs, etc.
The positive aspect of the theme is that introduction of smart city will make the lives of
normal people efficient with roads free of traffics, less accidents, decision making will be easier,
digital equality will enhance, effective utilization of public utilities, increase in the employment,
etc. The negative aspect is that the information about the movement and personal details of the
people are tracked in the environment of smart city, so if any security threat occurs in the system,
this can impact the individuals living in the city too.
Missing Issues
The information system of the company is very effective in handling all the operation
across the environment of the company. The mostly used information system is the geographic
information system. All the operations of the company is mostly based on the GSI only as it
handles all the routing, analyzing of the location, density of the population, flooding data and
several other activities related to route analysis (Hegarty 2018).
The issues that have been identified are:
 The lack of strategies in terms of operating the activities of the GSI. It is better that
strategies are decided at the initial phase of any project undertaken by the company.
 The ambiguity in the source of the information, which is collected by the GSI
(Jokinen2014). Because of the fact that all information are not free and this will effect in
the costing of the company.
The CIO should also talk about the systematic procedures that the GSI does in the organization.
The negative impact that the data collection will have on the common people in terms of their

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personal details is not acknowledged in the interview. However, the aspects of innovation that
have been discussed are at greater length.
Future Direction
The future strategies that can be undertaken by CIO are as follows:
 Stating policies at the beginning of partnerships. The policies can be made from the
company side in the first hand. At the time of collaborating with organizations and other
public sector departments, the policies must be presented to them at the time of initial
conversation. This will ensure that no confusion occurs while working with the partners.
 Formation of a team that tracks new technology updates. As it becomes difficult for the
CIO to keep ear at the ground, she can form a dedicated team that will track the new
trends in the world of technology. This allow the director to associate more with the
people with brilliant ideas.
 To regulate tech-competition between the academic partners. As the company associate
with several researches and partners for the development of their technological
department, the partners can be arranged for competition that will enable them to
innovate in the same filed (Ornston 2014). If the innovation seemed effective to the
company then that can be incorporated in the business.


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