§ Mrs. RoeTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what action has been taken following the Government's response to the Chorley report on handling geographic information.
§ Mr. BaldryFollowing the Chorley report and the Government's response, the Government established an inter-departmental working group on the tradeable information initiative. The working group, which is chaired by my Department, has collated a summary of actions taken by individual departments in response to the recommendations made by Lord Chorley's committee of inquiry. A copy of the summary has been placed in the Library of the House, and a copy given to the Association for Geographic Information—AGI—as part of the Government's contribution to the association's review of progress against the Chorley committee's recommendations. In addition, the working group has collected details about spatially referenced data sets held by Government Departments. These details have been given to the AGI which has used them to establish an information service to answer inquiries about the data sets. The information service went live in January 1992.