Freeing Data - My Favorite
As I was saying to the CivicAccess.ca folks this morning, i was reading really important news articles such as Congolese men’s desire to get manicures & pedicures, Boy George doing community service with a broom and a dust pan in NY in a black number, and power outages in Tokyo when I came across my favorite subject matter - Free (as in no cost) and Open Access to civic data!
The UK Guardian informed me this morning that:
The government of Manitoba says it was the first in Canada to make all its publicly funded geospatial data freely available, without any licensing terms, to government, businesses and citizens.
Dam! Harvey Pokrant, director of the information technology services branch in the provincial capital Winnipeg says:
"Frankly, it just did not make good economic sense to try and sell data that the taxpayers already paid for, and it was costing us much more to try to sell data and manage distribution then we were making in revenue,"
This is what the folks at CivicAccess.ca have been saying!
I am sooo jealous - they even had a public debate with the big cheezes - Ordinance Survey - on access to public information. Sigh! Maybe one day we weee Canajiuns will gain momentum on this topic!
Canada proves itself to be genuine land of the free
Michael Cross
Thursday August 10, 2006
The Guardian
Public data drives public debate
Michael Cross
Thursday July 20, 2006
The Guardian
I thought Manitoba is in Canada? I’d count this as momentum no?
Comment by Boris Anthony — August 16, 2006 @ 12:13 am
ouin!
Comment by Administrator — August 16, 2006 @ 8:23 am