Posted by
Tracey P. Lauriault-2 on
Jun 01, 2006; 6:17pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/Re-CivicAccess-discuss-Digest-Vol-7-Issue-40-tp643p647.html
Thanks Bob & Marcel;
You have been providing some excellent information here and obviously
have some great insight into these issues. I have loaded links to the
docs you reference, and also the associations you referred to on the
wiki. I also added you as participants in the wiki and there is page
for you to add your bio if you so wish to do so. Just go to the
participants page on the wiki (civicaccess.ca).
See comments in line.
> Marcel:
>
> Thanks for this. I've been away from this world for some time, so am not up
> to date. As one-time chairman of an ITAC committee seeking wider access to
> government information, I remember some pretty rancourous encounters between
> users and government "custodians" around the GPS isssue. But your synopsis
> provides more clarity.
>
What is ITAC? Can you expand the acronym & provide a url! and/Or even
better post it here -
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/Organizations/Organismes
> And I'm sure that things have progressed. But in this day and age, when
> individuals have the power to develop powerful web tools, why should
> negotiation and persuasion even be necessary? Obvious illustrations of the
> benefits of data liberation abound. An individual who undertakes a project
> to use GPS and fare data to improve travel times may, on his own time and
> expense, come up with something of immense benefit to the world. If he's
> required to negotiate for access to the data, the project won't happen. And
> as for having to demonstrate potential uses to gain access, what about
> serendipity? Isn't that a major factor in innovation?
>
> So I continue to believe that the simple elimination of crown copyright, a
> vestigal law if there ever was one, would be a powerful stimulus to
> innovation. While it might not eliminate all the barriers to data access
> (since it doesn't affect the power to establish licensing conditions) it
> would send a signal to everyone (the government custodians included) that
> protection of data from "abuse" is not a legitimate mandate. Their role
> ought to be the opposite; to make the data available and encourage
> innovation. The Klinkenberg article eloquently makes this point.
>
I added a new section under politiques called - crown copyright - here -
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/Politiques, formatting is a bit ugly, we'll
jazz it up later.
> I hope CivicAccess will be one of the groups working to bring an end to
> crown copyright.
>
your help here would be much appreciated. Perhaps we could get some
good text and references we can use for out CensusAction. Any ideas
would be most wonderful -
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/CensusAction> Bob Gibson
>
>
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 28 May 2006 04:52:32 -0400
> From: Marcel Fortin <
[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: [CivicAccess-discuss] Time Travel Maps
> To: civicaccess discuss <
[hidden email]>
> Message-ID: <
[hidden email]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Bob,
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the restriction on GPS accuracy due to
> American encryption or degradation of satellite signals for security
> reasons? The result being inaccurate GPS readings by several hundreds of
> feet. Bill Clinton overturned this in May of 2000.
>
> To answer your question, absolutely we missed a great opportunity in Canada.
> The Canadian government was a leader in GIS and with its restrictive
> policies and price gouges they crippled any kind of business or research
> innovation that could have occurred in the geospatial industry in Canada.
> It's hard to do market, population analysis, or draw a map for that matter
> without data, or without being able to afford data. For a great article on
> the history of the restrictive data policies of Canadian Governments and the
> severity of their impact over the years, see Klinkenberg, Brian. 2003. The
> true cost of spatial data in Canada. The Canadian Geographer/Le G?ographe
> canadien 47 (1):37-49.
>
i linked to the Klinkenberg abstract here -
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/Politiques - under the heading of crown copyright
> As for failure, I wouldn't qualify it as that. We have to realize that the
> American model is not the one used around the world. Other countries have
> similar policies to ours as well. Some countries don't even have data to
> restrict. As well, the Canadian Federal Government has made huge strides in
> making data available following the creation of the Canadian Geospatial Data
> Infrastructure (CGDI) and Geoconnections in the late 1990's. One simply has
> to look at the huge amounts of data available on geobase.ca and geogratis.ca
> (yes, low resolution data for the most part, but it's a really good start
> with great new, better resolution additions recently such as the Digital
> Elevation Model product at 30 metre
> resolution) Many provincial and some municipal governments are also allowing
> downloads of their geospatial data for free. Manitoba has most of its
> current data online for instance, Ontario is also making several of its core
> topographic layers available for a very small fee. The National Capital
> Commission allows downloads of their geospatial data if I'm not mistaken. I
> could go on and on.
>
Marcel;
I partially agree with you, we do have much to celebrate, however, after
having spent thousands of dollars on data to do some quality of life
indicator work at the scale of the city, and trying to do some
demographic analysis of my neigbhourhood and some school catchment
areas, i feel we have a long way to go for the average citizen - not the
specialist - getting easy and free/no cost access to some useful data.
Having said that, Marcel, would you be so kind as to look at our
resources page and see if there are additional resources we can add
there? You could just post them to the list if you like or put em up on
the wiki. That would be really great!
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/Resources> So, a failure? I don't think so. I think we have to build on some of these
> successes and not try and compare ourselves to the U.S. too much.
> The federal government is not oblivious to the fact that data are mostly
> free in the US. In many cases federal and provincial hands are tied because
> of Crown Copyright and licensing policy, or they think their hands are tied
> See Werschler's "Dissemination of Government Geographic Data in Canada :
> Guide to Best Practices" at
>
http://cgdi-dev.ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca/publications/Best_practices_guide/Guide_to_> Best_Practices_v12_finale_e.pdf
> Our data cultures are different and we can't change that overnight.
>
i added this ref doc to the wiki here -
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/Politiques> The Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives (ACMLA) along with
> the Canadian Association of Public Data Users (CAPDU) have worked hard at
> negotiating data deals over the years.
I've added the orgs here -
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/Organizations/Organismesif you have some good refs, fire em over and I will get em listed!
> What we in the ACMLA have done is
> demonstrate the need for their data, how they can be used (something they
> don't always know), and how we intend to use them. The most effective
> argument we often have, however, is the ability to demonstrate to them a
> similar deal with another organization (this also works with industry). The
> strategy is often used at the provincial and local level. I realize again
> that these are academic deals but it does demonstrate the power of
> negotiation and communication and the usefulness of building on past
> successes.
>
> Marcel
>
>
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