{{Unreferenced, date=February 2022
The Mapping Services Agreement (MSA) is a licensing
contract
A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties that creates, defines, and governs mutual rights and obligations between them. A contract typically involves the transfer of goods, services, money, or a promise to tran ...
between
local authorities
Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-loca ...
in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
and suppliers of
geographic data
Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth (a geographic location or geographic position).
It is also call ...
. Most of its contents are covered by commercial in confidence requirements. The general outcome of the MSA, however, is the supply of geographic data to local authorities and the defining of licensing issues regarding address data.
The MSA replaced an existing agreement for the supply of geographic data between local authorities, police, fire and other emergency services, and the national mapping agency,
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
rules on procurement. As a result, suppliers of geographic information had to go through a process of open procurement managed on behalf of local authorities by the IDeA, an umbrella government organisation coordinating and promoting local authority good practice.
The result was that three suppliers were selected: Ordnance Survey, Intermap and Intelligent Addressing. For local authorities this meant little change in the supply of mapping data which continued to be supplied by OS. Intermap, however, supplied height data not previously covered by other arrangements.
Perhaps the most significant outcome of the MSA is the resolution of ownership, licensing and royalty issues that had existed between local authorities and OS. In the agreement the address databases (called
Local Land and Property Gazetteer
A Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) is an address database maintained by local authorities, who are responsible for creating all addresses. However, until recently those same local authorities have not held a unified and consistent list of a ...
s – LLPG) maintained by local authorities acknowledged the partial input of OS's address product,
Address Point Address Point is a mapping/GIS data product supplied by Great Britain's national mapping agency, Ordnance Survey. It is based on the UK’s postal mail organisation, the Royal Mail, list of postal addresses, Postcode Address File (PAF). The most sig ...
to these databases. In effect local authorities became "value added resellers" of ADDRESS-POINT and are required to pay OS royalties for the proportion of their use of the OS product.
The agreement also puts into place funding for the
National Land and Property Gazetteer
The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) is an initiative in England and Wales to provide a definitive and consistent address infrastructure. Up until recently Great Britain has not held a single list of all addresses in the country, meaning ...
(NLPG), the UK's national address infrastructure, which is made up of the LLPGs compiled by local authorities. It also enables the NLPG to compel local authorities to maintain their LLPGs and thus ensure the nationwide coverage and compliance by local authorities.
The Mapping Services Agreement contract expired on 31 March 2012 and was replaced by the Data Co-operation Agreement.