[Talk-us] State Open Data

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

In California, we are quite fortunate to have not only a great deal of open data, but an explicit (two, actually) state Supreme Court cases which unambiguously assert that data created by the state in the name of the People belong to, yup, We, the People.  In other words, if the data are public, created by a state agency, the data are "ours" to use as we see fit, including a hand-in-glove fit with OSM's ODbL.  The web's "initial entry point" can be considered https://data.ca.gov although there are MANY more online sources of such data which can be freely used.

Please see:

Government Code §11549.30 (the California Open Data Act),

County of Santa Clara v. California First Amendment Coalition, 170 Cal. App. 4th 1301

Sierra Club v. County of Orange, 57 Cal.4th 157 (2013) and

California Public Records Act (Statutes of 1968, Chapter 1473; currently codified as California Government Code §§ 6250 through 6276.48)

Hooray for open data, hooray for how it continues to improve OSM!

SteveA
California