Open Geodata

Open Access to State-Collected Data

Open Access to State-collected Geospatial Data sets out the case for policy allowing free re-use and redistribution. If you agree with the statements contained in it, please sign to register your support.

Policy on open access to geodata

Licensing and Intellectual Property
Research
Legislation

In the United States, all geodata gathered by central government is released into the public domain, free of cost other than the cost of distribution where necessary.

In the EU, as of July 2005 bodies of information held and collected by central government must be made available subject to terms which may deny re-use for no more than "the cost of collection, production, reproduction and dissemination, together with a reasonable return on investment."

The EC Directive on the exploitation of public sector information is emphatic about geodata: ( 2003/98/EC) :

Public sector information is an important primary material
for digital content... Broad cross-border geographical 
coverage will also be essential in this context.

Map data is a special case; it is needed to make sense of the other information collected and held by government; voting patterns, planning permissions; 75% of government information is spatial.

In the UK, Map data collected at state expense is controlled by the Ordnance Survey, a Trading Fund or company owned wholly by the government. It charges handsomely for licenses to use its data and updates. Public good projects beg or borrow data access, and opportunity for economic activity and innovation are missed.

Open map data licensing

A Creative Commons-inspired free for non profit use has been proposed to the Ordnance Survey by Giles Lane of Proboscis. This license is very similar to those being used or discussed on the open mapping projects. Read the open data license.

Research into open geodata policy

Among the landmark papers in this area are:

A KPMG Canada study into the effects of open data access on economic activity which prompted a policy change in Canadian government.
A paper by Peter Weiss with reference particularly to the economic benefits of the data currently held and licensed by the Ordnance Survey.
Work by Roger Longhorn and Mike Blakemore on GIS data pricing and collection policy.

Legislation

The directive on the exploitation of public sector information
The Aarhus Convention on access to environmental information.
The INSPIRE proposed directive on a spatial data infrastructure in Europe.