Northland Regional Council releases data with Creative Commons
The public have been granted access to significant Northland Regional Council's geographic information system (GIS) data under Creative Commons licences.
In what is believed to be a first for a Regional Council in New Zealand, the Northland Regional Council has decided to grant access to roughly 90 percent of the data currently on its GIS databases. People have become more familiar with GIS applications in recent years, the Council has been receiving ever-increasing number of requests from people keen to secure its GIS information.
The New Zealand-based company Koordinates is hosting the NRC’s self-produced CC and extra non-CC information via its website, making the data easy to find and access online.
The Council expects future users of its data to include businesspeople, private individuals, farmers (who increasingly use farm mapping GIS software to manage their farms) planners, consultants, engineers, GIS professionals, ratepayers and others.
Freeing up data using Creative Commons licences can benefit agencies in a number of ways, from cost savings to investing in future data-reuse innovation within the community.
Both local and central government agencies had traditionally believed GIS information should be sold to meet or help offset what had often been the quite considerable costs of collecting it. However trends to make data more available and affordable encourage collaboration and future value-adding to the data. Making GIS data more accessible to ratepayers – who can then source information themselves - will also free up considerable amounts of Regional Council staff time currently spent meeting requests for this data.
The move by the Northland Regional Council represents what we hope to be a widespread initiative within New Zealand to make public sector information more accessible online.
Date: 11/09/2009
Source: Northland Regional Council
