Defra has disclosed a copy of its new agreement with Cranfield University for maintenance and support of the LandIS Vector and Soilscapes Database, which includes the authoritative digital soil map for England and Wales.
You can download the disclosures and related correspondence:
FOI2023_24515.zip (1.7 MB zipped)
This version of the agreement was disclosed following an internal review of my Freedom of Information request, and contains far fewer redactions compared to the copy published on Contracts Finder.
I've written about the LandIS arrangements previously, in a 2019 blog post:
Why isn't the national soil map open data?
Despite claims in a recent Defra post, it is not clear to me that this new four-year LandIS agreement represents a significant improvement to the accessibility of soils data and information for England and Wales.
Although development of the LandIS datasets has been funded with public money, using assets owned or co-owned by the Crown, national soil data remains accessible to most organisations and the public only on commercial terms.
In its initial response to my FOI request, Defra maintained that redactions in the copy of the LandIS agreement published on Contracts Finder were all consistent with exemptions in the FOI Act. The majority of material in the Contracts Finder copy is redacted.
However, following an internal review Defra has overturned most of those redactions. The newly disclosed material includes the background preamble, clauses on intellectual property rights, licensing, and confidentiality, and schedules that describe ownership of LandIS, ownership of IPR in data and materials, preservation services, and licensing to third parties.
Cabinet Office guidance for publishing on Contracts Finder anticipates that public authorities will redact contract documents in line with exemptions in the FOI Act. In practice, I doubt that is happening – there is no statutory requirement or regulatory incentive for authorities to apply FOI standards to proactive publication of information. (For another example of this problem, see the Federated Data Platform contract awarded to Palantir last year. Following a legal letter, NHS England has now said it will publish a revised version with fewer redactions.)