[Talk-us] Ramsey County Minnesota opened its GIS data to the public today

stevea steveaOSM at softworkers.com
Sun Feb 16 20:41:56 UTC 2014


This is great, so Thank You Justin.  However, while county-at-a-time 
"public data freedom" updates posted to talk-us isn't a BAD idea, 
once again I think it is incumbent upon OSM in the USA to start 
capturing the status (legality, to assuage any ODBL concerns) of 
public access to public data on a wiki page as a small project.  I 
suggest we start statewide table and drill down to county or city 
level when known/required to do so.

I'll start (well, reiterate):  California has our Public Records Act, 
so all GIS data held by a county or city here is available for the 
asking.  It's as plain and simple as that.  No license terms are even 
allowed to be attached to it, by that statute and upheld explicitly 
by the California Supreme Court.

It may be that the credit due Minnesota (MetroGIS, other states...) 
is simply public officials more widely recognizing that public data 
are public data:  if state law says so (and high court affirms this), 
a re-iteration of this by a county agency doesn't make any more true, 
but it is good news that this fact have its truthfulness enjoy wider 
dissemination.

It is not whether or not a state or county agency "says so" that 
makes state's or county's GIS data available (to you, and therefore 
OSM, should it be a good idea to upload it), it is the state's public 
records law.  (Though, it doesn't hurt when a public agency says they 
are explicit).  Most, if not all states do (or should!) have such 
laws.  I believe it is a good responsibility of OSMers to determine 
these laws (public policies) in all 50 states, and share results.  I 
believe California's very open (relatively liberal) public records 
policy (law) is true in many more states, we (as OSM) just don't know 
these explicitly.  We should, and we should better communicate them 
amongs ourselves.

Let us adjust our attitudes, not putting the cart before the horse: 
in the first place, these data belong to us (we, the People), as 
state law often explicitly says so.  Agencies are not "masters" of 
these data, but merely its trustees.  That makes us (we, the People) 
the data's rightful beneficiaries (and executors).  Let us enjoy the 
fruits of our labor:  the public data we own and pay our agencies to 
maintain, whose job it is to produce copies for us as we ask for 
them.  Free of any licensing terms, as the data are already ours.

SteveA
California


>Today, Ramsey County, Minnesota opened its GIS data to the public. 
>Now access to street centerlines and parcel information is free for 
>the public to access.  The data can be found 
>here:<http://www.co.ramsey.mn.us/is/gisdata.htm>http://www.co.ramsey.mn.us/is/gisdata.htm
>
>Cheers,
>Justin
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