[geo-discuss] Free geo-data: what next?

[Jo Walsh]

dear Dan, Malte, all,

On Fri, Nov 24, 2006 at 12:15:33PM +0100, Malte Halbey-Martin wrote:
> unfree geodata are unacceptable for me!
> So, can we do soemthing about it anymore or do we have to resign?

No-one has to resign themselves to anything :) As Rufus pointed out,
INSPIRE has yet to be transposed into national law; there will be
opportunities to affect legislation there, and to connect with local 
agencies using and producing geodata ...

The activities of publicgeodata.org have been INSPIRE- and Europe- 
oriented from the get-go, though, so where do we take it from here?
Over 7000 people signed the petition, from every member state of Europe.
If national mailing lists or websites are started or are picking up
momentum, we can email all these people. I would like to be able to
extend an offer of hosting facilities through the OKFN, if needed.

I think that in France and Germany in particular there are active groups.
There's also a broad representation across Europe on the freegis.org
list, and that would be a good place to connect through. There are
local chapters of the OSGeo foundation starting up in some places, 
which will provide a connection to small business, local government
and academic users as well as an existing remit to promote the
availability of and access to open geographic data. It would be great
to be able to provide a reference point for local groups working
towards more open access to geodata, open standards, open source.

There is a lot to be done practically, a ton of work on catalog
services, metadata search and "ontology integration" in particular.
There is a lot of data actually out there being published by different
agencies that are not at a National Mapping Agency level, available
behind OGC web services just waiting to be polled and indexed and help
to provide a leading example of what can be done with what can be found.

There is the opportunity to get involved in the implementing rules
drafting phase, this is where what metadata is obliged to be published, 
is decided, and i will try to find out more about this and whether 
OSGeo could be an appropriate vehicle. 

On Fri, Nov 24, 2006 at 04:41:03PM +0000, Dan wrote:
> Now, there must be other cases in the voluntary and community sector. Can we
> collect them and store them somewhere? We can then go to people in power and
> say, 'look what the current state of affairs doesn't allow - it's madness, and
> it puts the voluntary and community sectors at a great disadvantage in
> comparison to wealthy organisations.'

It would be great to write 'user stories' especially if they are
accompanied by hard numbers about licensing costs and what is being
impeded. The software patents campaign did well by collecting a lot of
testimonies, though there was an emphasis for political reasons on
small business user stories. 

It is a kind of catch-22 situation where we can't effectively
demonstrate innovation and cost savings without already being in the
situation we are arguing should exist. MySociety have made some
inroads here by working into a position of trust and getting limited
use access to some data sets to do proof of concept demonstrations
(I think they got to play with the NLIS data) and they are frequently
looking for interesting ideas and for volunteer code contributions:
https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/maps

Meanwhile http://openstreetmap.org/ really is starting to fill out
well. I have heard that in one borough the local council was donating
bicycle route data to them, data that the SDI doesn't want and of
course doesn't appear on the commercially produced maps. There is a
way to go - and the postcode situation is going to be awhile in
resolving - but it really is looking viable to provide a collaborative
map free of restrictions on reuse. The open source geospatial toolset 
is getting easier to use, better documented. I really want to see a
sandbox project, working with a local authority or a decent sized
not-for-profit to replace its spatial data storage and search systems,
and provide better working web services for related systems - one
could get commercial sponsorship to do this (think 'GoogleGov') ...

In the US one sees things like http://www.metrogis.org/ which is a
data-sharing arrangement between a lot of local government agencies. 
Federations of networking arrangements like these rather obviate the
need for a National Spatial Data Infrastructure, with gateways via OGC
web services, and the raw metadata being open to the internet, not
hidden behind search services; that's the way it should be going, right?
  
> 2. I'm just starting a PhD at Leeds Geog dept; I'm going to be creating
> java-based local economy mapping apps - again, geo-data will be vital to make
> it useable. I say this coz I'm wondering quite how I can direct my energies to
> help this campaign. What's next? If I wanted to try and get some support in the
> department for, say, a lobbying exercise, what angle should I take? Can we form
> a national position and provide some docs for folk like me to download, and use
> to harrass their departments?

We can certainly try :) Up to this point Rufus has had some contact
and correspondance with people at Defra; i don't know if they will be
responsible for the eventual translation of INSPIRE into UK law (it
was their problem in Europe because it's ostensibly about
environmental data; we are waiting for the annexes to the Directive to
see what geodata sets it will really cover). The Ordnance Survey
advised them what position to take, but the OS is ostensibly overseen
by the DCLG. 

That is about all I know, it would be a question of everyone winging it
together and writing down what worked on the wiki. One organisation
that could be helpful here is the Open Rights Group - they were
founded as a 'clearinghouse' for digital rights interest groups of
different kinds in the UK and could help out with media-friendliness,
etc - http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ 

As for a 'national position', i'm not sure i would dare try to
articulate one :) http://okfn.org/geo/manifesto.php is a statement of
the basic criteria and reasoning behind open geodata. Its signup
system is switched off due to spam, I will upgrade it really soon and
plan to redirect people from petition.publicgeodata.org to there.

Right now the wiki contains links to a few case studies in support
of open access to geodata. I think some more of Rufus' and Giles'
recent writings should be linked from there. A good library of
supporting material and references is something OSGeo should be
helping to put together as well. 

I have held off from changing the front page of the wiki because i
want to see the Directive first, you know? and it could be fun to do a
wiki analysis of the final text.

I hope this makes sense. There are a lot of potential angles, there is
only so much energy. Awareness is greater now and the Guardian's Free
Our Data campaign is doing a lot of good PR work (though their 
take-it-all-back-into-state-hands-tax-funded solution in my view is
not future-viable and unhelpfully polarises the debate into the OS's
terms... but i shouldn't complain! That anyone would deem INSPIRE
worthy of coverage has been amazing to me.) 

One thing I want to do is have another open geodata event.
On March 17th a one-day event is planned which will cover open access
to civic information, scientific data, geodata, and open media... 
this isn't definite yet, i think. Tomorrow (Tuesday) evening there's an 
Open Knowledge Forum on Civic Information (
http://www.okfn.org/okforums/civicinfo2/ ) which as usual has a geo
crossover moment (scraping planning information). The first Open
Geodata Forum was well-attended and we can consider doing another. 

Cheers for your enthusiasm and sorry this turned into a bit of a rant,


jo