Data Procurement, the creation of data monopolies vs open data

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

For open data to happen, we will need to revisit at all levels of government data procurement practices.

Often procurement happens under the guise of government and private sector partnerships.  These deals are often accompanied with regressive data procurement agreements which create data monopolies and restrictions on the re-use of public data with citizens paying the bill many times from many envelopes.

The government essentially privatizes our public datasets.  The same data we have paid for with taxation to enable the government to govern. It was part of the privatization of public responsibilities which we have been living with since the late 80s.  It is also called outsourcing.

Here are two classic examples:

1. Land Registry:

Ever use a land registry?  Go try it!  Here is how you get access to those public data:

a) Citizens submit building permits, plans, etc. to their local government to pay for and obtain building permits
b) Those data are then rendered into a large land database called a cadastre and registered in the land registry
c) In Ontario the cadastre is outsourced to a private sector company called Teranet (http://www.teranet.ca/index.html)
d) Teranet then resells access to view some of the land registry data via a computer terminal located at your local land registry office for a fee.  
e) The portal to view the data in the cadastre are managed by a system called Rosco (http://www.teranet.ca/products/rosco.html).
f) You can get access to land registry data by going to your provincial land registry office, and if you have special licenses online.  The online fee is higher than the onsite fee.  If you are onsite, you can only look at data that are registered in your own city not any other city at the Rosco terminal.  The databases are not interconnected.
g) You pay a fee to view land parcel registry record.
h) You pay a separate fee to print the record viewed.  A base fee and a per page fee per record.
i) A printer and a credit card swipe system is all part of the Rosco terminal.
i) To see the site plan, you take the number on the copy you just viewed, printed and paid for, go to the stacks of books, find your site plan, then photocopy it at an inflated price. The photocopy fees go to the copy company from whom the government leases the machine and to the government for paper etc.

I spent over $1000 doing research on the Ottawa land holdings of a Chief Minister Taib of Sarawak (http://sarawakreport.org/2010/06/taibs-lucrative-links-with-ontario-government/) which gave me real intimate knowledge of how marginal groups are impeded access to information because of cost.  In Sarawak, for instance, it is against the law for tribes people to survey and map their own land.  But that is another story.

The claim:

Incorporated in 1991, Teranet Land Information Services Inc. is a model of partnership between the government of Ontario Canadian private sector - (The Government of Ontario  refers to the provincial government of the province of Ontario. Its powers and structure are set out in the Constitution Act, 1867. In modern Canadian use, the term "government" refers broadly to the cabinet of the day, elected from the Legislative  and the) . Teranet's mandate is three-fold: to automate the land registry system for Ontario, to develop a fully-networked information utility including a remote-access gateway, and to market its expertise, systems, and applications within Canada and internationally. The strategic alliance concept provides a number of important benefits for government, the Ontario public, and industry: significant cost savings, quicker system implementation, and improved service and sectoral stabilization, to name a few. Teranet offers creative solutions in information management and land-related information systems through in-house expertise along with the resources of its technology partners. (http://www.thefreelibrary.com/World%27s+Largest+Cadastral+Database+Now+Online%3B+Intergraph,+Teranet...-a019597225)

Essentially, Teranet now has a monopoly on our public data.  I was told that we can thank Mike Harris for this process. 

2. Radarsat 2

A similar data procurement process is in place between MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) (http://www.mdacorporation.com/corporate/about_us/) and the Federal Government's Centre for Remote Sensing (http://www.ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca/).  in that case:

a) the public purse paid for the building of Radarsat 2 ($427 000 000) by MDA
b) Once constructed the government turned over the rights to the worlds best radar system to MDA
c) MDA shareholders wanted to sell Radarsat 2  to a US arms manufacturer but ensure Canada would still get the data
d) There was a political uproar, the Patriot Act was a sticky wicket that could impede access to the best data of the north, thus the sale of Radarsat became a sovereignty issue
e) CCRS / NRCan signed a data procurement deal with MDA that the government could view & used the data from Radarsat 2 (http://eods.nrcan.gc.ca/order_e.php) but access to those data by Canadians was for sale only.  NRCan does not have the right to share the Radarsat 2 with Canadians.

In that case we paid for the technology, we paid for the science, we paid for the ground stations, and then we pay again to access those same data under very rigid re-use restrictions and licenses.

NOTE: I wrote quite a bit about the sale of Radarsat at http://serendipityoucity.blogsome.com/ - just search Radarsat.

Bref;  once we have started the conversations about open data, we at some point will all be faced with procurement practices and contracts that will impede access to those data.  Also, we will have to put practices in place to ensure that those types of outsourcing/privatization/government-private partnerships process are created with the public good in mind.
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Tracey P. Lauriault
613-234-2805