Comments on: Thoughts from the North Carolina GIS Conference

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:27:24 +0000

@dave correct, if contributors only have a mechanism for throwing over a fence then of course they won’t feel a need to maintain responsibility. Analysis, as you point out, is one way to do this. But that serves a minority of stakeholders (albeit very valuable work). Foremost there should be a two-way interchange. Local data flows up to regional, to federal, and then is disseminated in a timely fashion, maintaining ownership and links to all regions. So TIGER could in fact start with national data, be augmented by local data and then redistribute this improved version.

This model is exactly what OpenStreetMap is following and why organizations like the UNJLC are keen to work with the project. The UNJLC can gather and maintain data they care about in a way they trust, but also offer it to OSM. OSM will build it into their dataset and offer it *back* to UNJLC and partners – effectively being another maintainer, integrator and supporter of these valuable datasets.

This lack of bi-directionality is a problem in both government and commercial. NAVTEQ and Google both are very good at asking local municipalities for their data, cleaning it up and then building it into products. But they then *charge* the providers for this value add instead of giving it back to them in the original formats.

By: Dave Smith

Dave Smith — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:18:26 +0000

There is definitely value in bidirectional flows. Some of the federal paradigms have been in throwing money at building nodes for data which then feeds into central systems. Essentially, “contributors” throw their data over the fence to the feds, where it vanishes into some black hole. But do the contributors really care about the quality of what they submit? Timeliness? Completeness? Maybe, maybe not. If it validates and the light’s green, all’s good.

Meanwhile, the data received may actually be full of problems, only to get recontaminated with every refresh cycle.

States and others will, as such, “participate” as long as the money’s flowing, and as long as it’s mandated that they participate. But what happens if the money dries up? What real stake or care do participants have beyond that? They don’t use the data they submitted to the feds for their own purposes, they just use their own operational data stores.

BUT – what if the feds, instead of just throwing money at stakeholders to build nodes, build value-add capabilities to make it worth participants’ while – modeling, analysis, data services, reporting, et cetera – and demonstrate the value – on a cross-borders level, on that macro scale, et cetera – to the participants? Watersheds don’t honor political boundaries. Road networks do not come to a screeching halt at the state lines. Who else to do it at those levels but the feds?

By: Jason Birch

Jason Birch — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:36:44 +0000

I can think of a few datasets that we’d want to accept feedback on, especially stale features, but given the level of surveying/engineering rigour that is applied to most of our base datasets, public alterations aren’t really on the plate.

Did Dr. Im do the IM Rivers thing? That was one of the best parts of GeoWeb for me last year

http://imrivers.wordpress.com/video/imrivers-song/

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:47:38 +0000

Interesting thought @epicanis. I do favor the term ‘participant’, but recognize that there are still official sources of qualified data. And the important point is that when this data is gathered by the government, it should be freely, and easily, shared.

OpenStreetMap is a great example of crowd-sourced gathering of data. Subsequently, official sources should accept feedback, alterations, and additions as appropriate.

Check out Sean’s post about QA for CrowdSourced Geodata for some of the thoughts on how we want to incorporate this concept into GeoCommons.

By: Epicanis

Epicanis — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:27:09 +0000

"The concept of a simple “data consumer” was not understood or welcomed" As it should be, in my personal opinion (for what it's worth). The trend of calling everyone a "consumer" has got to be one of the most insidiously destructive social trends in modern history, even if it hasn't been especially dramatic. People are passive enough as it is without vendors and politicians alike convincing them that their role is simply to wait like a baby bird for the Mama-Bird "Supplier" to come along and vomit up some "product" for them to use up ("consume"). I say to the Hell of their choice with "consumers", it's about time we started giving some love to participants. (OpenStreetMap is a good example of a service targets and encourages "participants" well, I think...)