With interest I note that Ed Parsons is stepping down as CTO of the Ordnance Survey. Some in the industry are puzzled but after having watched the interaction between Ed and projects like OpenStreetmap I’d like to hazard a guess. Ed has shown some interest in the open data movement (here, here and especially here for example). I think his guarded support should be read as very encouraging given his position as an executive officer of a government organisation that depends on commercialising its data to fund itself. In fact, I like to think that perhaps Ed would have liked the Ordnance Survey to be rather more open than it currently is. I’ve never spoken to him so this is purely speculation, but I think the key part of his post is this quote from the OS intranet:
Ed is keen at this stage of his career to help develop more innovative areas of the GI industry. His decision comes as Ordnance Survey is focusing on a period of a consolidation in its strategic IT development and direction.
I read that as saying “Ed wanted to innovate, we didn’t”
