Strategy Updated 2026-05-14

Strategy — overview

The why, the what and the how, in one place. OPDA is a 5–7 year programme to make UK property transaction data interoperable, verifiable and consent-driven. This section explains the strategic frame and the live delivery plan.

Why OPDA exists

The UK homebuying-and-selling process is the most consequential transaction most consumers will ever undertake, and it is mediated by a fragmented set of industries that cannot exchange data interoperably. The same property information is re-entered manually by estate agents, conveyancers, surveyors, lenders and search providers, with different forms (BASPI, TA6, FME1, CON29 …) carrying different shapes of the same underlying facts. This costs the industry hundreds of millions per year, slows transactions by weeks, and produces avoidable consumer harm.

OPDA's hypothesis: if you publish a shared linked-data vocabulary for property transactions, plus a trust framework that lets participants verify provenance, the industry will move from manual re-entry to data exchange — unlocking efficiency, faster completions, and better consumer outcomes.

What gets delivered

flowchart TB OPDA[OPDA]:::user S["`PDTF schemas *JSON Schema + OpenAPI*`"]:::success TF["`Trust Framework *governance + accreditation*`"]:::success L["`Linked-data layer *SKOS · OWL · SHACL · JSON-LD*`"]:::success SBX["`Sandbox *operational evidence*`"]:::success ACC["`Conformance & certification *scheme*`"]:::success OPDA --> S OPDA --> TF OPDA --> L OPDA --> SBX OPDA --> ACC

Five concrete deliverables. The current site documents the first three; the latter two are in progress.

How it sequences

Three programme phases — see Programme phases for detail:

Sandbox (operational now). Controlled-environment validation of the technical, regulatory and governance choices.
Live trust framework. Productionised version of the Sandbox, opened to accredited participants under regulatory wrapper.
National rollout. Industry-wide adoption with conformance scheme and certification.

This mirrors the Open Banking sequence in the UK (2016–2019) — see the Strategic alignment page for why that precedent matters.

How success is measured

Indicator	Today	Direction
OPDA member firms	13 founding + ~20 association	↑ — recruit surveying firm to close gap
Sandbox participants	Cohort 1 in flight (2026)	↑ — onboard cohort 2 in H2 2026
Schema downloads (npm)	~thousands/month (estimate)	↑ — leading indicator of industry uptake
Public videos / transcripts	15 + 1 (~2.5 hours)	↑ — explainer content for non-technical audiences
Government endorsements	DPMSG, DBT prize, MHCLG 12-week project	↑ — increasing momentum across departments
Industry coverage (bounded contexts)	5 of 6 (gap: Surveying)	↑ — close gap by recruiting RICS-aligned firm

Risks & constraints

Surveying-gap — no founding member from surveying. PIQ overlay exists but no implementer.
NTS withdrawal — material-information rules withdrawn in 2025; MHCLG successor consultation in flight but no published replacement yet. nts.json schema overlay will need updating once MHCLG publishes.
FCA position — uncertain whether/how property Smart Data scheme will sit under FCA authorisation (as Open Banking did).
Cross-jurisdiction — Scotland and Northern Ireland have different conveyancing law; current scope is England & Wales.

Sub-pages

Project roadmap — cross-workstream live plan
Programme phases — Sandbox → Live → Scale, with criteria for each transition
UK Industrial Strategy — the policy backdrop