The OSM community (or at least some key members) have really taken more of an interest of late in trying to work with government agencies to make OSM a standard part of business. There are definitely some folks from OSM that we can pull into this discussion who would be excited to try to work something out that could address the concerns a government agency might have (versioning, metadata specifying "official source",...).<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">This also has the potential of making a reality some difficult landmark
issues we’ve been dealing with for a while. Basically, how do we create
and update a landmarks dataset that is current, broad and multi-functional at a
regional level? Perhaps this idea has value from the <span>Geocoding</span>,
and Emergency Response perspectives as well?</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Certainly there are questions. Here are some:</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></font></p>
<ol start="1" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">How do we
mitigate unexpected content that could show up on our map?</span></font></li></ol></div></div></blockquote><div>Vigilance and making sure that we encourage the folks who are using the landmarks to pay attention. The value of crowd-sourcing gets higher the more eyes are on the content. </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div><ol start="1" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">How is this
managed from a technical perspective?</span></font></li></ol></div></div></blockquote><div> At the simplest level, staff from the Met Council just acts as any other OSM contributor. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div><ol start="1" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">How do we (or
can we) maintain the attributes that we’ve already invested in? </span></font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Can a <span>gov’t</span> institution make </span></font>OSM
a part of its operations without violating the spirit?</li></ol></div></div></blockquote><div>Absolutely! In fact that very much is the spirit. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Some notes:</span></font></p>
<ol start="1" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">I’ve
tried to contact </span></font>OSM in
accordance with their guidelines on a bulk import. While it is a
possibility, they are very sensitive to this type of behavior. I
haven’t heard back from them. See the import guidelines.</li></ol></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Do you have any direct OSM contacts? If not I can track some folks down that can help us work through this. </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div><ol start="1" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"> </li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Some data
from <span>datafinder</span> has already been imported into </span></font>OSM.
</li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">OSM</span></font>
describes a rich set of map feature attributes (tags). I encourage you to
check it out. <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features" target="_blank">http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features</a>
</li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Tags from
specific data sources can include additional tags specific to the original
data source like <span><i><span style="font-style:italic">datasource:key</span></i></span><i><span style="font-style:italic">=value</span></i>, for example “<span>tiger:cfcc</span>=A10” </span></font></li>
</ol>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> </span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">I’d love to hear your comments, if you have any. In the meantime,
I am working out some internal technical issues to make this happen on a test
basis for the Met Council. I’m also introducing myself to the OSM
community.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><br></span></font></p></div></div></blockquote><div>David</div></div>