The Interview: Ordnance Survey CEO on AI reinventing maps

Katie Prescott (0:04)

Hello, and welcome to the interview from Times Tech, our weekly conversation with the people shaping the future of technology. I'm Katie Prescott.

Danny Fortson (0:13)

And I'm Danny Fortson, and this week we're speaking to Nick Bolton. He is the CEO of a tech company that is more than 230 years old.

Katie Prescott (0:22)

Yeah, it's amazing. Ordnance Survey has spent more than 200 years mapping out every single meter of the UK, no matter how remote, under the ground and over the ground. And so of course, all of that data plays a huge part in how we use tech today. Just think of how many apps you use that rely on maps. So I'm really excited to talk to him about that and how he's basically seen this company evolve from the paper maps that I have used on walking holidays to supplying the likes of Apple and Google.

Danny Fortson (0:58)

It's really interesting because we kind of forget that our very tech-enabled world is often underpinned by just a lot of old school data collected by humans, often in this case, for centuries.

Katie Prescott (1:13)

Plus, he's got some great stories to tell about this very old business, including one about spiders.

Danny Fortson (1:22)

Indeed. So now here is our conversation with Nick Bolton, the CEO of Ordnance Survey.

Katie Prescott (1:32)

Well, Nick, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us.

Nick Bolton (1:35)

It's great. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.

Katie Prescott (1:37)

A lot of people think about Ordnance Survey maps as maybe what I used during my Duke of Edinburgh award, concertina maps with the kind of bright coloured covers.

How do you link into the tech world? What is Ordnance Survey doing with technology?

Nick Bolton (1:55)

You're pointing out the very thing that we're most famous for which are all these maps behind me, right? Those are the ones you had on Duke of Edinburgh. Congratulations, by the way, on completing all of that.

Danny Fortson (2:03)

I got very far by the way.

Nick Bolton (2:04)

The truth is that we've been around for 235 years.

For the first 200 years of that history, we've reached all of the maps and printed them all in an analogue manner. But over the last 30 years, we've gone through a massive digital transformation. Now the way that we source it, we refine it, and we distribute it, is a completely digital pipeline. At the very end of that, some of that data is, lo and behold, still printed on a map, because it's still good fun to crowd around and plan your trip from a printed map. What that means then today, the business is, is the custodian of 600 million data points, 600 million features all about Great Britain. We know where every building is, every road is. We know the footprint of that building. We know what's in that field. We know the angle of the roof of those buildings. We know even the lampposts and where all of they are. So all of that makes up that 600 million features database. We call it the National Geographic Database. And it's now our task to maintain and support that because it underpins everything from blue light services all the way through to housing transactions and all the way out to the way that education and roads are maintained.

Katie Prescott (3:07)

And you said you're a business because you're also a government organization.

Nick Bolton (3:11)

We are wholly owned by the government. So we have one shareholder, a really important shareholder, but otherwise we run a bit like a PLC. In other words, we're there to generate profits. We're there to work out how we supply the needs of customers and do that in a profitable manner. It just happens some of those customers are government, some of the customers are consumers, and some of those customers are commercial enterprises. We do all three.

Danny Fortson (3:33)

I'm curious, could we go back 235 years? What was the original kind of purpose of the Ordnance Survey? Why was it set up? And you mentioned you know the angle of all the roofs. Why?

Nick Bolton (3:42)

So, back in 1791, the document, the Formed Ordnance Survey says it was, whilst our navies were abroad, in other words, whilst the British Navy was abroad managing as much of the world as it possibly could, they were worried that Napoleon was going to pop across the channel and invade the southern half of Britain. And so to manage that, they thought they better know at least what the nature of the landscape was, because where would Napoleon's forces hide? Where would they be holding out that we'd then need to then flush them out and so forth? And so that meant that 1791, really, that was the first incarnation, the first map it took us 10 years to produce, which is of Kent, and then we graduate around the South Coast. So that was really, it was really one about national security. That's really why we were created. And what they found is once you've got a good map, lo and behold, it's really useful to all sorts of people. Landowners for deciding, is that my land or is that your land? Where's the divide between us? And also actually just the good functioning of government or property transactions. And that spans the history all the way up to today, which actually brings us to, so why would you be interested in the angle of the roof? Well, it's to do with photovoltaic cells. So if you want solar panels on your roof, you want to know the aspect of the roof in order to know, is it worth my financial benefit investing the capital up front in order to deliver that? I use that as an example because it's the one that sort of surprises people, but even things like building height, which of course is interest to fire services, how many floors are there? Before we go to the show, have we got the right tender that can make sure we can get up to that height and so forth?