Oral evidence: Satellites and space, HC 804Tuesday 15 March 2016
Oral evidence, 15 March 2016.
Witnesses
Professor Ian Boyd, Chief Scientific Adviser, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Philip Marnick, Group Director (Spectrum), Ofcom, and Neil Ackroyd, Chief Operating Officer, Ordnance Survey, gave evidence.
Chair
I welcome all of you to our final session on space and satellites. As you may or may not have heard, we have a particular focus on innovation and growth. We are very proud of the role that the space sector is playing in the UK economy. We think it is largely a positive story, but there are always ways in which we can improve. If you were here at the end of our session with the Minister, you will have heard me quoting the phrase, which has come up a lot in our inquiry, that the greatest challenge now for the space industry is to become more outward looking; it needs to reach out to other sectors in the UK and the global economy so that they can benefit from space applications, data and services. It is clear to us that this lack of awareness limits the achievement of some of our goals under the IGS. Can you give us an idea of why you think it has been a bit of an uphill struggle to get public sector and businesses interested in using satellite data and other space services? Perhaps you would like to start, Professor Boyd.
Professor Boyd
The quickest answer is that it is a complex area. Very large amounts of data are available from satellites of a variety of different of types. For the public sector in particular, to increase its capability to receive those data and turn them into useful information, which can then be used within public policy, needs a whole system change in how we do things. It means that we have to have a data-oriented system of management. The real challenges in that sit within the skills in the public sector, for example, but also in the systems and processes. The large volumes of data are a challenge in their own right, but the number of people who have the skills to be able to process those data and the private sector involvement to provide the tools those people need to process the data is taking a while to get going. We have been very good at putting hardware in the skies and designing it in such a way as to throw a lot of data at us, but we have not been so good at designing the systems to receive the data and turn them into useful information.
Chair
Is that also your opinion, Mr Ackroyd?
Neil Ackroyd
I think we can draw an analogy with a similar challenge we had with geospatial or mapping data. We had some great pockets of good use of data in specific sectors. Four or five years ago, with Government support, that was put into a single service agreement, for access to that data across the whole of Government. We have gone from 200 or 300 to nearly 4,000 public bodies using that data. How you provision the data, serve it and make the information easy to access and use is a critical part of this problem set. I agree that the technical infrastructure around satellite-based data, or MoMo sense data, has not been put in place to facilitate that. There are specific use cases—Copernicus is a good example—where data might be turned into a product to respond to a specific flood event. You do not see that scaled across to have a service-level provision to meet specific downstream business needs. You see good point practices, whether it is precision farming or flood response, but you cannot see integration of the content and data into a service provision. As we found with mapping data, that would make a huge difference to uptake.
Chair
That is very helpful. Professor Boyd, can you take us through the cost-benefit analysis that DEFRA did to ensure that applying Earth observation data to issues such as crop monitoring, marine conservation and so on will enable you as a Department to deliver services in a cost-effective way? You are considered a lead Department in this area, so trying to understand what led you to make that decision and what analysis created the environment to enable that would be helpful.
Professor Boyd
The analysis is at a number of different levels. There is a gut feeling that this is a good thing and that DEFRA has a number of policy objectives that would be helped particularly by Earth observation data. There are a number of different types of data that come from satellites. There is communication and there is navigation, but we are talking here about Earth observation. DEFRA is responsible for the landscapes and environments of the UK, and Earth observation data naturally lend themselves to informing us about the status and trends in those assets. In order to address that, we have created a centre of excellence in Earth observation within DEFRA. That was a matter of looking across the DEFRA group—in other words, the Environment Agency, Natural England, the Marine Management Organisation and all the other organisations in DEFRA—and asking how much skill and expertise we have in this. Having done that, we decided it was too thinly spread, so we brought it all together under one overarching management structure called the DEFRA centre of excellence for Earth observation. Its function essentially is to be the intelligent customer for DEFRA. It has the skills and capabilities to process data itself, but my suspicion is that through time it will move to be more of a commissioning body, to use the wider private sector to supply what DEFRA needs in terms of capability in Earth observation, because we are simply not big enough to hold all the skills ourselves. In terms of cost-benefit, it was clearly sensible to bring together all the skills in one place so that they could properly interact and we could see critical mass, but underlying that is an economic case. For example, in some of our applications we can see a reduction of about 80% in the cost of monitoring, let us say, the common agricultural policy areas for which we have responsibility. There is roughly a 10:1 benefit—in other words, £10 of benefit for £1 spent—in the analyses we have done to date, so it is all pointing in the right direction. We also have a Secretary of State who is very keen on open data. Open data have brought about this revolution in Earth observation. We have the Copernicus system with open data, and the Americans have made the whole of the Landsat dataset open as well, so that can take us back, potentially, to the early 1960s. A lot of other satellite systems are going up—for example, the Chinese are putting up satellites—that will simply make the data completely open. We have to be in a position to be able to take the benefits of those open data. The formal analyses we have done so far represent a small amount of the kind of benefit we can get. We do not fully understand what the benefits will be in the long run, and only by practising the approach we are taking to Earth observation data will we start to tease out where the benefits lie. I think they will be a lot greater than the formal analyses say.
Chair
That is very helpful and interesting, because my next question was going to be about the extent to which you think skills shortages and the lack of digital data analytical skills are holding back our exploitation of space satellite technologies across Government. You said the solution within DEFRA was to centralise the skills, but you think that long term it is going to be essentially outsourcing of some kind. What do you think the cross-Government, or even cross-organisation, answer is?
Professor Boyd
There is definitely a shortage of skills, and it comes in two forms: the deep skills to handle and process data and turn it into a useful product, but also the skills that are mainstreamed within the average civil servant, for example, to be able to take data in a reasonably well-processed form and turn that into a product that is useful to them in decision making. That is a matter of trying to make sure there is a general upskilling of capability in the public service. Of course, we would want to try to recruit people with appropriate STEM-type skills but also interests in this area. There is a shortage of deep skills, but we take the view that we are not going to carry most of those deep skills ourselves in the long term. Most of that will be supplied by the marketplace. There are two reasons why we are taking this approach: one is to get better at doing our own policy making, and the other is to try to drive the marketplace from which we will eventually benefit by being an early adopter of the capabilities before us. By being an early adopter, we want to help to drive the marketplace in a direction that is helpful to us.
Jim Dowd
Mr Marnick, my questions are directed to you. Radio spectrum is an increasingly scarce resource, although appropriate technology makes it much more versatile than it has been heretofore. Demand for it grows increasingly, not just by satellite operators but mobile phone companies and plenty of others. What criteria do you adopt in deciding how to allocate such a precious resource?
Philip Marnick
In space there are two precious resources. The first is satellites, but the second is geo-location spots—places in space where you can put satellites. You may have noticed that a week ago we issued a new consultation in relation to spectrum for space, to try to understand where growth was coming from, and therefore where we had spots for doing it. At the moment, in our region of the world, about 68% of weighted spectrum is allocated to space, both science and navigation and communication systems, and everything else. The UK currently allocates about 22% of that spectrum; that has been asked for and is used in space. You can contrast that with some of the other areas that are doing it. The great thing about space is that a lot of the applications are very geo-located. They are in a particular location, apart from television, which is broadcast and received everywhere. There are Earth stations that receive it in particular places, so it shares with a lot of other applications. Some of the main bands used for today’s satellites are used by fixed links and everything else, so we have ability between sharing and demand to do it. Earth observation was one of the key areas where technology was not helping, because you need more spectrum to be able to get a closer picture of the Earth. At the last WRC we allocated another 600 MHz of spectrum to that area to enable that to happen. Our criteria are to look at where the demand is, to see where the best interest is in what we are trying to get to and how we can balance that demand. One of my main challenges is, therefore, to try to see how you can get different segments of industry working together to understand the challenges of the others. One of the bits is that everybody says, “I’m very important and I can’t possibly share. How do I get it?” By getting people to work together we are doing that. With space particularly, we have introduced an MOU to see how we can understand what the real requirements are. As you have said throughout a lot of your questioning over this period, some of it is growth in the applications that use it, and they do not directly relate to the spectrum that is needed to deliver the services. We have been trying to make sure we understand that and get together and, therefore, put it together.
Jim Dowd
I was going to ask what steps you are taking to meet the unusual demands of the space sector, but you have just covered it and I am grateful for that. Most Members of this place will know that the telecoms companies, in particular mobile companies, have a very extensive and elaborate lobbying operation compared with the much smaller voice of the space and satellite industry. Are you confident that you are not just giving in to those who shout loudest?
Philip Marnick
The space industry is a phenomenally strong lobby, not just in the UK but globally, because it operates globally. At the moment, about 8% of spectrum is used by mobile, so it is not as high as most people think. The challenge of mobile is that it is nationwide to enable us to get coverage, so we do not think we rely on that. What we are looking at is real evidence of where growth and demand are, and how we can forecast growth and pinch points and see what happens, so for us it is creating criteria based on evidence as opposed to the people who shout the loudest.
Jim Dowd
How significant a factor is the scarcity of radio spectrum for the space sector in the UK to reach its full commercial and technical potential?
Philip Marnick
It is always a challenge. Most mobile usage has been in the sub-1 GHz bands, up to about 3 GHz recently as we have gone higher. While there are lots of satellite operations there, a lot of the new satellite demand is in much higher frequencies, so the challenge has not been as great as people thought. We need to make sure, however, that as we move to the fifth generation of mobile, where we are looking at millimetric waves, we understand the needs of both sectors. In the last WRC, the UK took the very strong position of trying to find bands where 5G mobile can go that did not impact on other services. We thought we needed to have it by about 2019-20, and that we needed something where there was a reasonable probability of things co‑existing, so we took a very strong position to try to make sure that happened. We are trying to protect some of the bands used by satellites and others.
Jim Dowd
Provided it is addressed intelligently and from an informed point of view, the allocation of spectrum in space should not be a constraint.
Philip Marnick
It should not be a constraint, but, as you say, everybody fights for every bit of spectrum, so you have to make sure you understand where the demand is and how you can make it work. It is my job in life to make all of that happen.
Chair
No pressure.
Derek Thomas
Mr Marnick, we have heard from experts that your proposals to amend Ofcom’s management of satellite filings go beyond what is required by the International Telecommunications Union. Is there a risk that that places an onerous responsibility on satellite operators, and why have you taken a tougher line than others?
Philip Marnick
We do not think we are taking a tougher line than others. One of the big challenges is not necessarily spectrum but people’s orbital slots. In the space industry there are an awful lot of what we call paper satellites, with people making filings for things that will not turn into reality. We have been asking people, and will look to ask them, to provide information they have themselves anyway, so we are not doing anything that is putting an increased burden on them. We are asking whether the programme is real and whether there is a business plan to show it exists. If so, we can put our effort into making sure we deal with things that are real as opposed to things where, “I want to position myself a bit better.” In doing that, we look after the UK itself and the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. We also represent all the overseas territories, and the same rules apply there as in the UK. At the moment, we are one of the largest filers of stuff. We compete against the Americans, the French and other people. We see companies moving between areas of the world to enable them to get the slots they want, and we have not seen a drop-off in people wanting to come to the UK. As to the people who deal directly with us, we understand what they need and can try to fight our corner better to make sure we get it. We are trying to make sure that we can give fair access to the people who need it, that we do not have as many paper satellites as most people would want and, therefore, that we make the slots in space available to as many people as possible.
Derek Thomas
In a way, you have answered my next question, but I will ask it anyway. In terms of the risk of satellite operators going overseas, where the regime might be more attractive, are you suggesting that the indication is that that is not the case, and would not be the case?
Philip Marnick
Some satellite operators file through multiple countries anyway; for example, people file through Gibraltar or Luxembourg. People do that all the time to enable them to ensure they optimise their position in the system. Do we think people will go overseas as a result of this? We have not had any real indication that people will do so.
Derek Thomas
When do you expect the results of your satellite filings consultation to be published?
Philip Marnick
Shortly.
Derek Thomas
Following your “shortly” answer, will firm policy proposals be made?
Philip Marnick
Yes. We would like to make everything as clear and precise as we possibly can.
Chris Green
Mr Ackroyd, Ordnance Survey’s written evidence states that it is developing a new strategy “predicated on overseas growth” in the use of geospatial data from satellites. Is that because you do not anticipate much growth in the UK?
Neil Ackroyd
It is probably a range of things, and there are three key ones. We certainly have seen and are seeing a slowdown in the adoption of geospatial information in what is a very small country with a very well-developed geospatial industry. There is obviously some very high-quality data here. Ordnance Survey operates a mixed model of growth. We contract with Government but also with commercial partners and commercial resellers. There is a certain degree of tension with that commercial aspect on open data. As more data is released as open information, the income generation is not coming directly but through first or second-order benefits and so forth. At Ordnance Survey, which is in a very fast technology industry, we see the need to mitigate that reduction in income generation capability by increasing our ability to generate services and service business overseas. The real driver is the globalisation of the industry in which we operate. Britain is a very small country in the global footprint. Our technologies and capabilities are well developed in this country, so we see an opportunity to take those and apply them to the increasing demand for higher-quality geospatial information now being driven by the smarter city agenda, land reform and the widespread adoption of geospatial information through mobile devices. All of that is creating a globalisation of the market, and we can either ignore it, in essence staying in a constrained environment, or try to supplement our responsibilities to map GB with opportunities to generate new income streams.
Chris Green
I suppose it is helpful that you are a Government-owned company. That philosophy of being a company selling to the market is key, but your written evidence states that you would welcome an opportunity to discuss your growth strategy with policy makers in BIS. Given that you are a wholly-owned Government company with BIS as your only shareholder, surely you have those regular opportunities anyway.
Neil Ackroyd
That comment is about the integration of different policies. For example, if you look at information about how Earth observation data is used, it comes through a range of different Departments; it can come through BIS, DEFRA or DFID. When you look at the global opportunities, they tend to span our own Department’s responsibilities. A development opportunity that is World Bank-funded—it might be a development in central Africa—falls within a different remit from one that might be around innovation funding or innovation streams. Currently, it is more about cross-Government opportunity than specific opportunity within the Department, and bringing that together.
Chris Green
What work have the Government undertaken to examine Galileo in terms of the impact it might have on the delivery of Government services?
Neil Ackroyd
We have been a strong advocate of Galileo, primarily because it adds a layer of integrity and new service provision on top of GPS or GNSS. We think that is still substantively untapped. The Galileo programme has been slow in its evolution. I had the pleasure of starting off in a GPS programme back in 1983 and that was slow in its evolution. These things take longer. Galileo is bringing a level of opportunity that has a chance to reinvigorate applications into much more precise use of signal services: for example, advanced train control systems and autonomous vehicles. All of these technology-based ambitions are driven by two criteria: one is the vehicle or the platform knowing where it is; the other is knowing where it is in relationship to other things that it does not necessarily want to intersect with. There is a strong combination of mapping data and positioning data. A smart vehicle is not just mapping its own world and hoping that it makes a good judgment; there is an intermediation with mapping that has gone on and an authority that allows app mediation, to say, “That thing that you think is a post box is a small child, because we know it is not a post box.” There is a mediation thing around our technology ambitions for autonomous vehicles and the almost traditional approach to mapping the country and providing authoritative data. Those will become even more important in the future rather than less important. Having available a reliable European-owned positioning infrastructure is part of that, as is having very fast update methodologies, big data capability and digital skills. This is probably the fastest period of technology change I have seen in my career, certainly in the past two to three years, in terms of both the ambition of this country to be involved in some of these big technology programmes but also the technology’s capability. Sometimes we lose sight of that. It is a very fast-changing period.
Chris Green
I will come on to the Space for Smarter Government programme in a moment, but in terms of the Galileo project is there an application in DEFRA?
Professor Boyd
For Galileo, less so than Copernicus. The Copernicus system is changing our whole attitude to the capabilities of Earth observation support policy. Galileo will provide good positioning information and that sort of thing, but from our point of view we are most interested in detecting change in the landscape. Sometimes you need to get positioning information for that, but most of it is about getting data layers for land cover maps and that sort of thing. There is limited application for us in Galileo, but until you explore some of the new technologies you never quite know what they are going to do for you. That is where it comes back to having the skills and capabilities to look at what is coming in and adapt quickly and intelligently to the opportunities before us, knowing the outcomes we require. It is people who can understand and translate what the technology is doing and giving us, and what policy delivery is required for understanding, say, changes in the landscape and that kind of thing.
Chris Green
To what extent have DEFRA and Ordnance Survey been involved in the Space for Smarter Government programme, and how effective has it been?
Neil Ackroyd
We tend to be more involved with the catapults because they focus more on the downstream implementation or user aspect of it. When we look at space, there is a slight tension with Ordnance Survey’s use. Because we map so accurately, the majority of satellite data does not meet the resolutions we require. We are more dependent on fixed-wing aircraft, and, looking forward, we see value in UASs as a significant option to satellite-based data. If you are looking at precision farming, many of the benefits are in field variability; the resolution from a satellite is not necessarily ideal for that level of granularity, but a small low-cost UAS is. We certainly see the value in land use change, especially in mountain moorland areas where there is a high cost to mapping them conventionally. Generally speaking, we tend to use flown imagery because we can get the resolution and coverage we need. Britain has a certain level of inconvenience in the optical spectrum because of the amount of cloud. It is hard to guarantee that you will get coverage quickly enough unless you target the mission to the geography you want. That is driven by a different set of requirements from DEFRA’s. Our requirements are more about high-precision sub-decimetre mapping and less about the broader classification of vegetation or land use. The power will come in the integration of the technologies, where the end user is not making an active choice about whether it is imagery captured from satellite, drone or fixed-wing aircraft. The ability to integrate information into a seamless mosaic is a very powerful capability that is coming. You can see that being tied into farming, especially a greater increase in precision applications; I think only about 20% of farmers are using precision farming at the moment. If you get into a space where it is easier to use, with much better prescription application, reduced use of chemicals, reduced run-off and more precise and higher crop yields are all there. I take a very optimistic view of that. Those are clear and specific benefit cases that can be built, and that is why the integration of the new technology, of which Galileo will be part, in things like precision farming is a very appealing combination for the future. There is also an element of custodianship. It is not just more productive land but better and more effectively and environmentally managed land. There is a great combinational opportunity arising in land use.
Chris Green
It’s nice to talk about farming.
Neil Ackroyd
Yes.
Professor Boyd
We work in a pretty seamless way with the Space for Smarter Government programme. I think it would have been extraordinarily difficult for us to set up the centre of excellence without their support and their funding of specific projects in our area, particularly those relating to our small business research initiative, which is funding projects in Earth observation on flooding, CAP delivery, marine projects and those sorts of things. We have a very strong working relationship with SSG, and I would like to see that continuing in the future, if at all possible. All the indications are that they are very keen to work with us, so it is a very hand-in-glove relationship.
Chris Green
From 2014-15 the budget was doubled, and for 2015-16 there seems to be more growth in the future. I suppose that is driven in part by demand from DEFRA and Ordnance Survey.
Professor Boyd
All I can say is that we work very well with them, and that increase in budget is probably a response to the fact that there are good outcomes as a result of our relationship with them. I want to encourage them to spend more.
Carol Monaghan
Mr Ackroyd, you have already spoken about future potential technologies that can be developed as a result of space data. Where do you see the greatest market potential for the growth in the use of space data?
Neil Ackroyd
Comments were made earlier about environmental management, environmental response and disaster response. Those are key areas where space brings a unique capability to provide vast tranches of data quite quickly, but it is a more complex market than it was perhaps even five or six years ago when we had only a number of choices. The choice was to put up a fixed-wing aircraft or to try to task a satellite and hope that, with all the other priorities and difficulties of tasking satellites, we would get the image or information we needed. Satellites are quite hard to task. You wait passively hoping for the data to arrive over a long period of time, and then you can build an analytic set. To target and task a satellite can take quite a lot of effort and still not get the results you need. There is a pragmatic reality in how space reacts to very fast response requirements. It is good at building a record and it is good at building comparative capability to do a good analysis. To take the recent floods in Cumbria, even though we tasked a satellite for information, because the floods were primarily in an urban area the angle of the satellite view and the resolution did not give us the information we needed, so we had to augment it with ground-based capability. At a broad level it gives us long arms, but the real value comes when we integrate it with other components in a data view. A point was made earlier about layers of information. Our ability to create that view, whether it is based on existing information, satellite information, specific response information or employing assets in the field, is the bit we have not successfully achieved yet. That in itself will be the driver for greater consumption of satellite data and UAS information, which is also a very powerful collection of imaging information. There are other areas where satellites will increase their capability to do things that we cannot do with existing solutions. One is the ability to put sensors up there that provide a much greater range of data, whether it is satellite radar or multi-spectral, to give information about crop health. Those are only just coming on stream. With the latest Sentinel launches as part of the Copernicus system, we are starting to get new information we have not had before. We are still learning how to use that. I think the agricultural application is probably the strongest use case for Great Britain—outside communications, of course, which are related to broader public consumption as well. For Ordnance Survey, it is the integration of multiple datasets, which plays back exactly to the point about whether we have the digital skills and expertise. In the past seven or eight years we have noticed a reduction in those skill sets within Government, partly because of the challenges around budgets, which means that some of the more specialised skills have been harder to protect, and partly because we find those skills developing very quickly in other geographies: for example, in India and China. There is a natural economic reality in looking for those skills. The volume of skills is significantly higher, and they are generally correlated to technology hubs. Hyderabad is a good example of a technology hub that brings together and integrates a lot of different skills. We find it quite hard to hire the skills we need, and quite a lot of our capability is now offshore. That is just a practical example, first, of the ability to scale and, secondly, of the basic reality. It is really hard to get those skills in GB. They are specialist skills and they are not that hard to get in consolidated groups sitting in other parts of the world. China has invested hugely in imaging, mapping and remote sensing, to the point where they probably have the single largest capability in the world in not just mapping but in producing content from it. Even the capabilities of our friends in the platform providers are built in places such as India and the Philippines. The geo-technology dimension has become radically different in the last five or six years.
Carol Monaghan
It is interesting, because what you say links with one of our other inquiries—digital skills. It sounds as if there will be real economic issues as a result of our not being upskilled in the UK. That is possibly for our other inquiry. We have been told that the space sector lacks understanding of the needs of the potential users of data and, also, that potential data users are not aware of the possibilities of space data. How do we co‑ordinate that?
Neil Ackroyd
When you unpick it, everything is always more complex, isn’t it? We did a good job in this country in investing in cubesats, microsatellites or nanosatellites, but the real downstream exploitation of that has occurred off the west coast of California with companies like Skybox and PlanetLapse. That is just a nanosat technology. I spent 15 years working for a US west coast company in Silicon Valley, and the cultural investment is so radically different—their willingness to accept higher risk. At the moment, in this country, we try to underpin some of the risk with Government funding, but there is not a clear step to the next level of risk funding. We do not have people willing to invest at a higher level of risk, as you do in a west coast technology company where there is much more speculative risk investment funding. By its nature, space is risky. The downstream application of space requires not just a lot of software development and technology in the upstream but quite a lot of risk in putting satellites in space. We have seen a lot of the Swarm satellites—the new technology industry—moving out of this country, which is a real shame, but it is understandable when you look at the culture of venture capital investment or the willingness to make risk investment. It is hard to get that level of risk investment in this country. Innovate UK is looking at how it can relate VC-type innovation funding to Government projects, and that is a very powerful opportunity. It is hard to do, because people start to want detailed business cases and value for money assessments: “It’s novel and contentious.” Well, of course it is. That is the purpose of doing it; it is novel, contentious and risky. When projects hit those barriers in this country, we should not be surprised that it takes three or four years to get through them. I have seen that regularly in my career. In this country you come up with a good idea, and “It’s novel and contentious,” which means everybody gets nervous about doing it. Our risk appetite is low. Maybe that is because our reward appetite or reward recognition is low as well, but that balance is a problem and one that I see quite regularly in our own investments.
Carol Monaghan
Professor Boyd, DEFRA has produced a road map for the use of Earth observation data across the Department. Is work under way to produce a wider road map of the Government’s overall needs where space-based services and data are concerned across Government?
Professor Boyd
You are probably aware that an initiative has been ongoing for the last six to nine months to look at cross-Whitehall capability in Earth observation. That was led by Stephen Lovegrove, the DECC permanent secretary. I supported him as co‑chair of that group. That is in the process of developing its conclusions. At this stage, we would not call the next stage a road map, but that may well be something down the road and we may well call it that in due course. The road map DEFRA produced maps out the centre of excellence, and there is a project called the Earth observation data integration project that we have going as well. That is a test case to pilot methodologies that can then be potentially scaled up. That road map is potentially a template for a cross-Government road map, but we are dealing with a much more complex problem. DEFRA itself is quite complex and has a complex problem to solve in terms of how it uses Earth observation data. It is magnified several times when you look at it across Whitehall. While DEFRA is interested in understanding change in the landscape—to put it in very broad terms, change at different spatial and temporal scales—that can be used in other contexts. For example, DCLG could look at change because of its interest in planning regulations and those sorts of things. There are transferable issues. Across Government we have identified two other areas where there is generic need. One is in emergency response and the other is in security. Each of those will need a different set of solutions. We are looking very seriously at how we build the skills across Government, as we are doing in DEFRA, and trying to find the resource to make sure that happens, but it will probably require a level of reorganisation of the distribution of resources currently put into satellites and Earth observation. We are not dealing just with satellites but with AUVs as well to make sure that happens. To date, the governance structure for the delivery of Earth observation data has been designed to put satellites up and get the data out, not to receive data and turn it into information. We need to change that governance structure, and it will take a bit of time, but it is ongoing.
Carol Monaghan
Do you think the chief scientific advisers, for example, might play a role in building Government’s capacity to use the data?
Professor Boyd
I would hope that they do, and certainly my interest in it is driven by my own belief that this is a game changer for Government, not just for DEFRA for which I have responsibility. But, as I said earlier, government is a system, and changing that system to be able to use this opportunity intelligently does not happen overnight; it is a long-term process that must be designed very carefully. You could end up with a disruptive process that would mean that business as usual is hard to deliver. We do not want that; we want to be able to do business as usual but change our systems and processes in such a way that we are evolving into a new way of doing things, rather than having a dramatic change that might be difficult to manage.
Chair
I thank all of you for taking the time today to come and give evidence to us. It has been a fascinating and very helpful end to our oral sessions on satellites and space. You have answered all our questions fully, but we will probably have a few further questions to ask as we write up our report. If we do, I hope you will write back to us and clarify those points. All that remains for me to do is to thank you very much for the time you have taken today and to close this session. Oral evidence: Satellites and space, HC 804 2