General points
Strategic initiatives with large numbers of stakeholders and datasets and significant opportunities for benefits through network effects. May be specific location data initiatives (e.g. driven by INSPIRE or national location data strategies) or broader data initiatives involving high value datasets or open data, driven by open government, data policy or growth and efficiency drivers. Policy justification may involve cost benefit analysis but will often include socio-economic analysis to account for the broad potential impact of the policy. Cross-programme assessment may be challenging but useful illustrations can be made with particular applications (e.g. environmental assessments in the case of INSPIRE or high value datasets such as addresses or geographical names).
Case studies
One of the best large-scale illustrations of the benefits of interoperable data, combining and integrating public sector high value location data and other data, is the Danish Basic Data Programme. This has some well-presented quantified results, both in terms of intermediate benefits and outcome benefits. It is also a use case for open data. Between baseline measurement in 2012 and further measurement in 2016 there was an Increase in users of the online service from 800 to 60.000 and an increase in site visits per annum from 800m to 3.3bn. Socio-economic value of geodata increased from an estimated 1.6 billion DKK in 2012 to 3.5 billion DKK in 2016.
Similar programmes have been set up in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.
The Danish Agency for Data Supply and Efficiency (SDFE) created a model for calculating the value of open geodata based on a control group design. Companies using the data were compared with similar companies that do not used this data (control group). The method makes it possible to compare the actual evolution of geodata users with the counterfactual situation in which they did not use geodata. With this approach, the cumulated contribution of open geodata to the Danish GDP from 2012 to 2017 was calculated to be 2.99 billion Danish kroner.