Of Open and Closed Geography

Talking of the price we pay for idiotically closed geographical data:

The United States has benefitted in many ways from having public data sets that are freely used by scholars, commercial firms, consultants, and the public. An example of this is the TIGER system (Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing system http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/) Many countries do not, and one British geospatial expert estimated that the closed nature of their system has cost them one billion pounds in lost business.

(Via Open Access News.)

Inspired or Not?

This sounds good news:

The European Parliament and Council reached agreement last night on the contents of the proposed INSPIRE Directive, which aims to harmonise spatial information across Europe.

Key points resolved during the final stages of the discussions between the institutions included the principles according to which citizens should be allowed to examine the official maps and other spatial data covered by the directive, and rules for granting authorities access to data held by other authorities.

...

Data search services designed for the public will generally be free of charge, although the directive allows fees to be charged for access to data that has to be updated frequently, such as weather reports.

However, the cynic in me suggests that the devil is in the details. Anybody know?

Update: Michael Cross of the Guardian does: the answer is "not inspired". We've been stitched up by the Ordnance Survey, invoking that perennial favourite, "reasons of national security" for withholding information - just like that nice Mr Bush does. Ever heard of Google Earth or Google Maps, which already give all this information?

Uninspired Little Englanders

I've written about INSPIRE before, and now this depressing piece in The Guardian suggests that the twits in the UK Government are going to scupper it because of their feudal insistence on protecting inefficient and anachronistic "businesses" like the Ordnance Survey. Release the data and let a thousand businesses bloom, people.