Ordnance Survey is the national mapping agency of Great Britain that has 600 surveyors who capture 5000 changes every day. Sending this change to their customers has proved tricky. At the moment you can choose between receiving a DVD of GML or downloading via FTP.

Having investigated services based on OGC specifications the creators wondered if there was something lighter weight and with wider acceptance in the community. Could GeoRSS be an alternative, could their customers get their change data automatically?

Working with Mikel Maron they built a prototype of a system to publish change-only-update as a GeoRSS feed. Built using Ruby on Rails, the system allows customers to subscribe to a feed for a particular area. This means that customers, such as emergency planners, have access to the most up-to-date data possible with the minimum of delay.

This talk will focus on the problems faced, the solution implemented, and thoughts on using neo-geography in a national mapping agency.