The Emerging Free Geodata Movement

Yesterday was an important day in the exploding field of geodata and mapping innovation. It marked the issuance of an open letter from Public Geo Data, an organization that opposes the current construction of the INSPIRE Directive, a directive of the Council of the European Union that proposes that geographic data gathered by government bodies within Europe should remain the property of those bodies and not be available freely to the public. Public Geo Data's position is that INSPIRE slows innovation and costs jobs.

Quoting the open letter:

This is an important issue as it is estimated that fully 80% of all information collected by government has a spatial component and geographic information is needed for environmental, census, and transport purposes among many others. Moreover state-collected geographic information is a public good and, as demonstrated by several studies, open access to it is the only way to realize its full social and commercial potential for Europe.

The Guardian carried a good article yesterday discussing some of the issues surrounding not just geodata but government-held data that is gathered using public funds.

At the moment, the European Parliament is scheduled to vote on the issue June 13, so between now and then, much lobbying will be done on behalf of organizations looking to open access to public spatial information. Check the INSPIRE site to keep up to date on this issue.