[geo-discuss] Re: petition.publicgeodata.org 4 Switzerland !

[Jo Walsh]

dear Felix, thanks for writing.

On Tue, Apr 11, 2006 at 11:09:48PM +0200, eXception handler - Felix A. Kaegi wrote:
> perfect petition - we not only love it - we need it - and quite very soon !
>  
> would you please also add the Country Switzerland to the petitions
> address drop down list, so we could hand in the results also to the Swiss
> Government
> that does actually not belong to the EU.
>  
> PS: I've signet the petition without chooseing any country so far - but
>        without data we cannot hand in the petition to the Swiss Government.

You're the first Swiss person I've had this request from, but
appreciate that it's a big issue, also for the Norwegians; it seems
worse for them, because the Norwegian national mapping agency has been
heavily involved in the INSPIRE design process and plan to implement
whatever results from the Directive. 

I've been reluctant to add non-EU member states to the petition, as it's
about something so EU specific (a couple of Canadians have been in
touch to talk about their local issues; but Canada is *in theory* a
way ahead, slowly moving towards the open access stance in a pragmatic 
way - http://geocoder.ca/ is built with public geodata for example)

But Switzerland and Norway as special cases are probably ones that we
should consider including, as they will both be very much affected by
any EU Directive describing the public's right to access
state-collected geodata...

(unless anyone on the list has a strong reason to object to this, I'll
extend the country list in a couple of hours)


jo