Government to buy satellite car-tracking data

Satellite navigation data from private and commercial vehicles is to be used by the government to improve congestion monitoring and planning.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has signed a deal worth £3.25m over three years with traffic-information company ITIS for satellite data from GPS systems in 50,000 vehicles.

Current data, along with records going back to 2001, will be made immediately available and the DfT will provide it free of charge to the Highways Agency, Transport Direct and local authorities.

The government claims the data will dramatically improve congestion monitoring, especially in urban areas where it will be used to identify congestion hot spots and as the basis for planning and managing the flow of traffic on the England's roads.

The thought of the government having access to private vehicle-monitoring information is likely to raise privacy concerns but the DfT said the scheme complies with the Data Protection Act.

"The data is anonymised," a DfT spokesman told silicon.com. "No information made available from ITIS will make it possible to identity the vehicle or the person."

He said the information sold on by ITIS only comes from those who initially indicated they were happy to have the data made available to third parties.

Data-protection watchdog the Information Commission also confirmed that anonymity is key to complying with the law.

"If there is no way of tracking back that information to an individual, then it is not an issue," an IC spokesman said.