The Open Knowledge Foundation Network ha hecho público el manifiesto Open Access to State-Collected Geospatial Data. Se solicitan firmas, de diferentes países, para apoyar esta propuesta.
En la continuación de la entrada reproduzco el manifiesto completo (en inglés), pero aquí podéis encontrar la traducción de las principales ideas que recoge el manifiesto:
¿Cómo debería funcionar el acceso abierto?
- Todos los geodatos obtenidos por los gobiernos deberían ser abiertos, o sea, disponibles para su libre distribución y re-utilización bajo una licencia tipo "ShareAlike"
- Los proyectos de cartografía online que creen geodatos que puedan ser re-usados libremente deberían ofrecer una licencia abierta compatible
- Se derían adoptar formatos estándar y comunes para describir e intercambiar geodatos
- Toda la información obtenida por los estados debería estar disponible de modo abierto, en un formato estructurado y utilizable de modo directo por sistemas automatizados ("machine-readable")
¿Qué beneficios podría proporcionar el acceso abierto?
- Los geodatos abiertos significan geodatos mejores y más baratos
- Los geodatos abiertos son buenos para la economía
- El acceso abierto a geodatos sería bueno para la democracia y la participación ciudadana
[Vía Mapping Hacks]
Open Access to State-Collected Geospatial Data
We believe that state-collected geodata should be openly available to citizens. Please sign up below to support this manifesto.
How This Would Work
All government-collected geodata should be open, that is, available for free distribution and re-use under a ShareAlike license.
Geodata is a public good. Open access to it, under a 'Commons' (ShareAlike) license, is the best way to see its full benefits realized by industry and citizens. At the same time such an arrangement, by requiring users to redistribute updates and improvements to the data, promises to deliver more and better data for less.
Related efforts include the Urban Tapestries group's model non-profit open geodata license developed with advice from Creative Commons UK. This was submitted it to the UK's National Mapping Agency, the Ordnance Survey, as a basis for open collaboration.
Online mapping projects creating freely reusable geodata should offer a compatible open license.
The OpenStreetmap project offers its growing body of data under an Attribution-Sharealike license, which allows any kind of re-use of the data providing that derived works are also released into the public domain.
Common, standard formats for describing and exchanging geodata should be adopted.
The Open Geospatial Consortium has created a family of standards for open exchange of geodata via the Internet, and the World Wide Web Consortium's metadata standards are in general use.
Ultimately, all state-collected information should be openly available, in a structured machine-readable format.
How This Would Help
Open Geodata means better and cheaper geodata.
When more information producers have the opportunity to contribute timely and accurate geodata, quality improves. When more organisations have the chance to offer spatial information services competitively, prices lower.
Over 50% of UK national mapping data sales are to government or government-funded organisations; a false economy sending 60M of tax-based revenue back to a government-owned semi-private company. Ordinary citizens and not-for-profit organisations can't afford the current monopoly-priced data licenses, and are reduced to supplication.
Open geodata would be good for the economy.
In the United States, national policy places all government-collected geospatial information into the public domain, free of cost and free of restrictions on re-use. This lowers the cost of research and development, and innovation by industry and by individuals creates economic activity.
Open access to geodata would be good for democracy and citizen engagement
75-80% of the information generated by government has a spatial component. For public sector information to be effectively exploited, it needs to be as widely available as possible. EU Freedom Of Information laws heavily emphasise availability of geographic data[2].
Geographic data underpins civic services developed by non-profit civic information groups, such as WriteToThem and They Work For You. It is indispensible to efforts to analyse public information and make it more available to interested members of the public.
