Public sector licensing guide

Learn what you can do with your PSGA member licence

The Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA)

The PSGA sets out how Ordnance Survey (OS) provides world-leading location expertise to the public sector across Britain. Public sector organisations can use most of OS data under the PSGA.

Your PSGA member licence

View the PSGA member licence and the Royal Mail's Public Sector licence

  • PSGA Member Licence

    The PSGA member licence sets out the terms of what you, as a public sector organisation, can and can't do with the data you are licensed for and can get access to through your agreement.

  • Royal Mail's Public Sector Licence

    As all of our addressing products licensed to you under the PSGA member licence contain Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF) data, you’ll find reference to Royal Mail Public Sector Licence (PSL). This is because we need to ensure that we pass on the relevant terms to you.

Your PSGA licence commitments

View the PSGA member licence commitments

As a member you can:

  • Use OS data in your day-to-day activities to support your operations and meet your public task.
    Read our OS public task page for more information.
  • Share OS data, and your OS derived data, with other public sector organisations who are also licensed under a PSGA member licence.
  • Share your information with anybody who is involved in providing an immediate response in emergency situations, even if they are not licensed to use OS data.
  • Share your digital information with third parties:
    1. Contractors
    2. End users
    3. INSPIRE end users (relates to OS derived data only, rather than 'raw' OS data)
    4. For public viewing (make your information publicly available in print, online and as data)
    5. Innovators who wish to use your OS derived data (rather than 'raw' OS data) to research and develop ideas and propositions
    6. Pre-approved third parties (licensed partners).
  • Publish your derived data:
    1. Free to use data (the licensee not the licensee's sub-licensee shall recreate, reproduce or represent any feature attribution or any feature in any topographic dataset, or any substitution of such feature attribution or feature)
    2. Presumption to publish (data.gov.uk, Open Government Licence (OGL))
    3. Exemption.
  • Use products included within the PSGA.

Your licence doesn't allow you to:

  • Use OS data beyond what is permitted by the member licence (PDF).
  • Use OS data to make any financial gain/profit from your activity, although you can speak to OS to arrange an alternative licence that would permit this.
  • Use OS data in any competing activity. If you wish to use OS data to compete with OS or an OS licensed partner, you can only do so if you enter into the appropriate commercial licence.

Your responsibilities are to:

  • Make sure you only use OS data for a purpose that meets your (non-commercial, non-competing) core business.
  • Take the necessary steps to prevent unauthorised access to OS data.
  • Let OS know if you suspect any infringement of OS copyright and support their investigations. This includes providing them, when requested, with access to records of who you have supplied data to.
  • Pass on appropriate licensing terms to third parties when sharing OS data. This normally means sending the terms in a document along with the data you are providing.
  • Include a copyright/database right statement with the appropriate trademarks, to clearly acknowledge your use of OS copyright/database right material in printed and online maps.
  • Only release your OS derived data under the terms of the Open Government Licence (OGL) where the data either (i) meets the derived data exemption publishing criteria and you have completed a presumption to publish form, or (ii) you have applied to OS for, and been granted, an exemption permitting you to publish the data under such terms.

Sharing OS data

Public sector organisations often need to share data they get from OS with other organisations and community groups.

PSGA members can share OS data with each other with no restrictions.

If you’re a Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA) member, we want to make it easy for you to share OS data with others when it supports your core work. Below are four licences that we have created for you as part of the PSGA Member Licence to enable such sharing.

In addition, PSGA members can also share derived data with an OS Licensed Partner where they're already licensed under a (Framework Contract Partners) with us. Check your Member Licence for more details.

  • EU INSPIRE End User Licence

    Use our EU INSPIRE Licence to facilitate better public access to environmental data.

  • Innovation Licence

    Use your derived data created using OS Data for innovation developing, evaluation and testing with third parties.

Create and publish derived data

Helpful links for creating and publishing derived data

  • Helpful licensing terms

    Our licensing terms provide information about some of the more common terms used in the public sector licences.

  • Request an exemption

    You'll need to request a publishing exemption if your OS derived dataset doesn't meet our publishing criteria.

  • Presumption to publish criteria

    We encourage the public sector to publish datasets derived from OS data. Check our publishing criteria and let us know about your dataset.

Contact us about licensing OS data

Speak to one of our team to ask any questions about licensing OS data under the PSGA

Get in touch about licensing OS data