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Data reseller would benefit from Free - no cost Access for citizens to Public Data

Posted by Tracey P. Lauriault-2 on Jun 14, 2007; 12:59pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/Data-reseller-would-benefit-from-Free-no-cost-Access-for-citizens-to-Public-Data-tp1085.html

I have been attending the Geomatics Indudstry of Association of Canada
meetings for the past two days.  And like any industry association their
job is to ensure their industry grows and their members thrive.  There
was however some great conversations about access to data and
licensing.  I had a wonderful conversation with one of Canada's largest
public data resellers.  She was very clear that data resellers would not
loose business nor suffer if public data would be given away freely.  
She explained that their company has to dedicate significant human
resources just towards calculating the royalties to be paid to
Statistics Canada.  Her company is finding this to be quite expensive
and is costing so much that they are reducing the kind of services they
used to provide around that data.  She also said that if the data were
available freely, they could get to the business they do best, which are
data services and analysis.

I of course spoke to her about civicaccess.ca and she is willing to be
interviewed for our blog should we get one.

This is really exciting, as the rhetoric from government is normally
that they would put data resellers and related industries out of
business a if they gave the data away!

There will also be a new best practices study released shortly that will
discuss Licensing models, and it seems that the model adopted by
Statistics Canada was not included as they are on the margins with their
practices!  The study will be version 2 of the following:

    * THE DISSEMINATION OF GOVERNMENT GEOGRAPHIC DATA IN CANADA GUIDE TO
      BEST PRACTICES -
      http://www.geoconnections.org/publications/Best_practices_guide/html/summary_e.html.

    * As i was looking about i found this document - Licensing
      Geographic Data and Services (2004) Board on Earth Sciences and
      Resources (BESR <http://www7.nationalacademies.org/besr/>) -
      http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309092671

And on a final note, our govermnent with its division of powers between
federal, provincial and municipal is a blessing and a curse.  For the
Feds to push for a spatial data infrastructure, they needed to have an
accord with the provinces to share data.  It took a great many years to
get that accord signed and this accord has resulted in the freeing up of
much data but also in the creation of cohesive data layers such as the
geobase data layers.  Collaboration is key!  Check out the accord -
http://www.geoconnections.org/publications/Key_documents/GeomaticsAccord-010816_revisedxSA040413_E.pdf