Group Sues Santa Clara County, CA for Reasonably Priced GIS Data

Thursday, October 12. 2006

Group Sues Santa Clara County, CA for Reasonably Priced GIS Data

The Associated Press reports that the California First Amendment Coalition is suing Santa Clara county California over its "government monopoly" on the base map. The group feels such action voliates the Public Records Act and the fees prevent all but the richest business players (from real estate, utilities, etc.) to acquire the data. Santa Clara states that the data is copyrighted and proprietary, though I'm not sure how that impacts the price it charges.

The AP story describes GIS this way:

The technology can be used much like the popular Google Earth tool, which allows users to examine detailed maps based on satellite images.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg at 06:57 | Comments (8)

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It will be interesting to see how the judge rules on this. As I understand it, FOIA requires counties to make their data available, but also allows them to charge enough money to recoup their costs. But the law is vague on exactly how much they can charge. Some counties interpret the law to mean they can charge as much as it costs to put the data on a CD - others interpret it to mean they can charge for the labor put into generating and maintaining the data. Several counties I work in charge upwards of $10,000 for a complete data set. Other counties charge about $20 for a comparable data set.

#1 Ben Slater on 2006-10-12 15:32 (Reply)

In my experience regarding GIS Parcel Data for California, I believe if the county owns the data, they should make it available at cost of copying the data to disc and shipping. If the data is owned by a commercial vendor, then let market forces dictate the pricing.

Regards,
Steve Laine
Laine GIS Consulting
1223 King St
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
831.460.1617 ph/fax
831.600.6437 cell

#1.1 Steve Laine (Link) on 2006-10-16 17:16 (Reply)

Gallagher,
would you care to elaborate?

Steve

#1.2 steve laine (Link) on 2006-10-17 11:27 (Reply)

There is far more benefit in giving away data than trying to charge for it...the idea a government might "compete" and "make our money back" for the geospatial products is absurd.

I challenge any such program to open their books and demonstrate they covered anything close to the cost of the reproduction program...much less the acquisition cost.

Data should be viewed as a sunk/consumable cost. Just like copy paper, gasoline, or utilities.

#2 Archie Belaney on 2006-10-15 13:51 (Reply)

Fascism, Fascism, Fascism

#3 Clinton Gallagher (Link) on 2006-10-17 10:44 (Reply)

Unfortunately the typical governmental entity that is responsible for creating and maintaining the data does not have a budget source and must compete with other business in the government for dollars to operate. While some counties see the full value in their GIS data, charging for data may be one of the ways for this office to show a return on investment to the county commission.

#4 Jim Hall on 2006-10-17 15:05 (Reply)

Santa Clara County originally spent about 650k to have their GIS land base digitized from 250 mylar maps from the surveyor's office- I should no, I was part of the team that constructed the map, back in 93-94. The county probably spends more than 300k for GIS employees alone, and who knows how much on IT infrastructure, software and hardware upgrades annually... Santa Clara is doing a lot of work for the Community utilizing the GIS data they are maintaining.

Why isn't anyone screaming about Orange County? - their argument for maintainance does not hold water,since SoCalGas is footing the bill.

My 3 cents worth...

#5 steve laine (Link) on 2006-10-17 15:18 (Reply)

A blogger just found this reading GeoWorld's December issue: http://openjump.blogspot.com/2006/12/quarter-million-dollar-shapefile.html

I knew I read it here first!

#6 anon on 2006-12-20 16:23 (Reply)

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