It's great to see serious traction on opening up government data in the US. Central and local governments around the world are beginning to recognize the econom

It's great to see serious traction on opening up government data in the US. Central and local governments around the world are beginning to recognize the economic and societal benefits of releasing data back to users for little or no charge. In New Zealand, the Geospatial Office estimated that the government could expect to see financial returns of $NZ 100 - 500 million from reducing barriers to GIS data access[1], and in 2010 the New Zealand government issues directives encouraging data to "standardise the licensing of government copyright works for re-use using Creative Commons New Zealand law licences"[2]. Mid last year Land Information New Zealand released the "LINZ Data Service" (http://data.linz.govt.nz http://data.linz.govt.nz) to make it incredibly easy to get hold of national GIS datasets. Similarly, the Australian Government disbanded the Commonwealth Copyright Administration, and "agencies are now required to release copyright public sector information under Creative Commons BY-licences or other open content licences, wherever possible."[3] Throughout Europe we're seeing the same trend. It's a sign of how far things have come - and how far some have to go when you hear things like: > The County's logic was that GIS includes software and data (citing ESRI's definition of GIS as "a collection of software and data") It is shocking that this would be used as a defence - not so much because of the clear and obvious (to technical literate people) difference between a data format and the software you might or might not use to manipulate it - and nevermind the plethora of FOSS GIS tools that are available - but that the County believes it's in the best interests of their constituents. 1. http://www.linz.govt.nz/sites/default/files/docs/geospatial-office/cabinet-paper-capturing-benefits-of-location-based-information.pdf http://www.linz.govt.nz/sites/default/files/docs/geospatial-... 2. http://ict.govt.nz/guidance-and-resources/information-and-data/nzgoal http://ict.govt.nz/guidance-and-resources/information-and-da... 3. http://www.ag.gov.au/Copyright/CommonwealthCopyrightAdministration/Pages/default.aspx http://www.ag.gov.au/Copyright/CommonwealthCopyrightAdminist...