[Geodata] optimism about geodata at the COMMUNIA workshop

[Jo Walsh]

dear all,

I am in London for a couple of weeks and dropped into the first
morning of the COMMUNIA workshop
on open public data in Europe. The keynote was given by Tom Watson MP.
He displayed a surprising amount
of clue and willing when it comes to open access to government
information. He claims the culture is
changing within Whitehall, and encourages those of us who gave up
campaigning two or three years ago
to brush up their material and have another try.

The new Australian administration are going open data, with a Creative
Commons Attribution license for as
much government-collected information as they can, and are now working
on local authorities and frowning at
efforts that are still trying to use the Non-Commercial clause in CC.

Rufus Pollock's work on the study of Models of Public Information
Provision and Tom Steinberg's work on the Power of Information Review
is being taken account of in high places. The current government and
the possible next one are both taking into account the message of a
burst of economic activity that would follow the release of government
data under an open license.

OpenStreetmap is now in some areas at least as good as some Ordnance
Survey data and in some ways better, though OS have a wealth of small
detail and identifier schemes. One audience member even asked; "Why
are you all still talking about geodata? Yes it is an important issue
but we wil see policy changes really soon, we should be thinking about
what else we want to build on top of that data" - healthcare,
environmental change, transportation, etc

I sensed a real optimism and confidence there, and look forward to
tasting a bit more at OKCon also in London on Saturday -
http://www.okfn.org/okcon/ And as for this "sea change" I will believe
it when I see the data with my naked eyes!

http://www.epsiplus.net/news/the_cambridge_study
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/advice/poi/power-of-information-review.pdf
http://www.communia-project.eu/ws05
http://www.okfn.org/okcon/