Interview: Manish Jethwa, chief technology officer, Ordnance Survey | Computer Weekly

The Ordnance Survey is fundamentally transforming its role from a static data repository to a dynamic provider of actionable insights. Under new leadership, the organization has restructured into a value chain focused on delivering customer benefits rather than raw geographic datasets. This shift emphasizes that users require meaningful intelligence derived from data, prompting a move toward product-led development and continuous service updates rather than one-off project deliveries. To achieve this, the Ordnance Survey is integrating advanced artificial intelligence and computer vision to automate feature extraction and bridge the gap between technical data specifications and user intent. By employing fine-tuned large language models and building foundational models on high-precision UK geography, they aim to democratize access to data. This approach allows complex queries to be translated into precise API requests, making high-quality geographic information more accessible and understandable for diverse applications without relying on generic, commercially trained models. This transformation is critical to open data ecosystems because it ensures authoritative public sector data remains relevant amidst a surge of easier-to-access but less accurate alternatives. By enhancing data usability through AI-driven insights and robust API integrations, the Ordnance Survey demonstrates how public data can actively power innovation. This strategy prevents market fragmentation caused by lower-quality data sources, reinforcing the importance of maintaining high-standard, accessible open data infrastructure for the broader technological community.

Source: computerweekly.com
Published on 2025-06-05

Interview: Manish Jethwa, chief technology officer, Ordnance Survey | Computer Weekly

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