In severalrecentposts, we've highlighted our ongoing efforts to partner with public sector organizations to add their map content to Google Maps and Google Earth. We undertake these partnerships because, by definition, organizations like local governments are the most authoritative source of geospatial data for their jurisdiction. But partnering with governments is a difficult mathematical equation. If you run the numbers for just the U.S. where there are many federal agencies with geospatial data, 50 state governments, some 3,000 counties and over 30,000 cities and towns, you quickly get an idea of the volume of relationships you'd have to develop and manage to add data from all governments to a service like Google Maps.
It's therefore no surprise that we at Google are very supportive of organizations that seek to streamline access to and simplify the sharing of geospatial data. One such organization is the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC), the association of U.S. state government GIS agencies. Among NSGIC members' objectives is coordinating the collection and sharing of data within their jurisdictions. Because of the efforts of many NSGIC members, we've managed to efficiently add aerial imagery and other datasets for entire states to our services. ...
We applaud the work of GIS agency managers and policymakers who are working, at all levels of government, to ensure that the public's investment in geosptial data is shared and thereby used across agencies and governments, but also is made readily available to the public through free services like Google Maps. We look forward to collaborating with NSGIC and other organizations to advance such efforts in data sharing.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 3/18/2009 09:15:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
