[OSM-talk-be] data for Brussels, Belgium from authorities for OSM

[Nicolas Pettiaux]

Dear Belgian OSMers

This mail complements the one I have sent earlier today.

Let's present myself first: I have been a long time supporter of free
software and free access to knowledge, (about 10 years), I have
lobbyed for the use of free softwares, open standards and open access,
and organized conferences and talks about the subject.

I have been a follower of OSM for a while, and I hab no time nor no
idea on where to start from because I didn't see the use of a GPS
either I did not want to invest. Now I see I have more ideas.

I am know a physics teacher at university level as well as a
university teaching assistant.

I am writing this mail because I do just few contributions to OSM, but
more importantly because I decided to get in touch with authorities in
Brussels to manage to get more data and useful informations for OSM.

I speak for the region of Brussels Capitals (RBC) in Belgium where I live.

First, the very good and positive information: I contacted the cabinet
of the minister Smet (SP-A), told my correspondents (there were 2)
about OSM, the philosophy and aims, and asked for a first simple
support. Minister Smet is in charge of "mobility" in RBC and as
recently announced the future (time frame is about 1 year) creation of
a mobility portal on internet to inform and get feedback from the
citizens. I therefore asked if we (= the OSM project) could just, as
some newspapers receive the weekly information that the administration
gathers about all the road works that are being done. My correspondant
found the project very very interesting, and agreed to ask the
administration to send us the information.  He was so enthusiastic
that he will speak in person about the project to the minister (who is
known to cycle in the city when the weather permits). We have
considered to meet and possibly discuss other support they could
provide.
I said I would manage for the OSM project to officially thank him for
such a support (even if small). Politicians like such official thanks.

Some first questions about this would be :

to whom should I discuss that and is there a recommended format to
easily incorporate such information nearly authomatically into OSM
(that is with little manipulations) ?

Is such an activity already performed somewhere ?

Should all such information be personnally checked on the ground
before including into OSM or would it be possible to "trust" such an
official administration for its data (and possible mistakes ?)

Secondly: the RBC is already well mapped in the urbis [2] system that
belongs to the RBC and is managed by the brussels centrum for public
computing (rough translation), called CIRB [1]. As I happened to be
one of their former employee, I know some people there, and I got in
touch with the former responsible of urbis [2]. For a long time, the
Cirb was rather jealous about the Urbis data, but as the time goes by,
I decided to get back in touch and suggest that they could release the
data to OSM as the OSM licence was CC-SA, and that this would not
create a competing proprietary market for the data (that they could
not use) due to the SA clause, and that it would be fully possible to
consider a double licensing CC-SA to and through OSM and a proprietary
one to other users (the CIRB already offers Urbis data freely to
schools in RBC and consider to offer the Urbis data for free - gratis
- to everybody for personnal use). My contact was again very very
positive (to my surprise !). And he is already asking questions about
technical consideration: wich data would be most interesting, who
would take the charge to convert these data and inject them into OSM
... ?

Much thanks,

Nicolas

[1] http://www.cirb.irisnet.be/site/fr
[2] http://www.cirb.irisnet.be/site/fr/produits_services/urbis

-- 
Nicolas Pettiaux - email: nicolas at pettiaux.be
Utiliser des formats ouverts et des logiciels libres -
http://www.passeralinux.org.
Pour la bureautique, les seuls formats ISO sont ceux de http://fr.openoffice.org