Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Tuesday, March 25, 2008

The high cost of the lack of open data

The Value of Spatial Information, a report by ACIL Tasman prepared for Australia's Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information and ANZLIC, March 2008.  (Thanks to Baden Appleyard.)  From the executive summary:

...Constraints on access to data are estimated to have reduced the direct productivity impacts in certain sectors by between 5% and 15%. It is estimated that this could have resulted in GDP and consumption being around 7% lower in 2006-07 (around $0.5 billion) than it might otherwise have been....

Comment.  These are big numbers and it takes a minute to put them in perspective.  In one country (Australia) in one year (2006-07), lack of OA to one kind of data (spatial data) cost the economy $500,000,000.