Dear Jill and everyone
Apologies for the slowness of my typing, which has been overtaken by several
subsequent posts.
We were a little surprised to hear these minutes had gone out to everyone in
ALGAO! These minutes were of User Groups (held on 26th Feb) helping us with
the design of a long-awaited development known as the LBS Online project. We
are currently formulating a formal notification of the project, its aims and
more detail of what is included to go out through various bodies (including
smrforum, ALGAO, IHBC, SOCITM, and maybe POS, SOLACE, etc).
In answer to your questions:
1. The data will be supplied initially to the person identified by each
authority appropriate to receive and distribute the data within that
authority. This could be the SMR Officer, an IT manager, the head of
planning, or whoever else the authority thinks fit. We'll make sure that
corporate GIS and SMRs are foremost amongst the systems that need to be
informed of its arrival.
2. Supplying data in xml format with stylesheets to allow export in various
formats should mean you can get the data into most local systems. The
question for exegesis users is whether you want to automate data import, and
if so how. There might be a risk of either duplicating or overwriting
existing data.
The speed of this circulation, intended for user group members, has rather
spiked our guns, and could lead to some confusion. Consequently, I append a
brief description of the project. I hope this helps.
Duncan Brown (project manager)
NMR Services
English Heritage
NMRC, Kemble Drive
Swindon SN22GZ
Direct dial: 01793 414903
Email: [log in to unmask]
LBS ONLINE
As one of our roles in relation to DCMS, English Heritage maintains the
official national database of Listed Buildings (known internally as LBS),
which was developed in 1996. At the time it was the intention to make the
data available to local authorities, but for various reasons we have been
struggling with the approach and consequent resource issues of doing this.
One problem has been the inability of our software/hardware array to allow
us to provide data effectively to third parties. Finally, early last year,
we got agreement on an approach to this, and our contractors have been
working on a final design for this since November, in consultation with a
number of local authority contacts.
This project, known as LBS Online, falls into three main parts:
1. Work to develop LBS, including software upgrades to support the rest of
the project;
2. Provision of a website, available to Local Authority and National Amenity
Society staff, providing rapid access to the current dataset;
3. Provision of full data for authority areas to all local authorities
(probably by CD), and means to keep this data up to date by email (hopefully
automated).
We are currently aiming to complete this development in September 2002,
which is a very tight timetable. However, we expect a pilot website to be
available for comment in May/June, which is ahead of schedule. There may be
a slight delay to issuing data to local authorities, because we are still
running a data capture exercise to add grid references to LBS, which we
think you will probably need! However, this may not cause any delay to the
September deadline whatsoever, and we anticipate that any outstanding QA
issues will be resolved by November/December at the very latest.
The website is intended for "professional" use (ie principally conservation
and planning professionals). We will be asking local authorities to identify
one administrator who will then be able to disseminate access to users
throughout their authority, and who may be the principal point of contact
for technical development of the system.
Data provided will be in xml format, and xsl stylesheets will be available
to allow this to be imported to several types of database. However, in order
to incorporate this data into your own systems (if they are
pre-established), you may have to set up a half way house for data
processing, both for the bulk data and for updates supplied by email. This
digital data will be licensed for you to use for a full range of normal
local authority purposes; this will be a standard HMSO licensing format, and
should allow you to disseminate information locally, or via your own website
if you wish.
We will (of course) be looking for assistance from local authorities to tell
us when details are wrong, or outdated, so that we (or the DCMS) can act on
these issues. A structured feedback page will be available on the website to
allow for this.
In the next few weeks, we aim to start a publicity campaign by various means
to raise awareness of this development among local authorities. I hope we
will be able to get more details out then.
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