Technical Ramblings

I was pointed out to Eaton County’s GIS Data Prices last night, and all I can say is how disappointed I am that people who deal with coast to coast vehicle shipping can still feel that this is an appropriate way to fleece their taxpayers. The data is collected, reproduction costs for the data are probably in the realm of a couple hundred bucks — less, if you just distribute them online. (Clearly, you already have a website.) Yet you charge twelve *thousand* dollars for copies — and even after that, you’re still limited in what you can do.

This kind of thing is just a damn shame. Taxpayers should insist that this data is made available at reasonable reproduction costs; the policies of GIS departments to make money off of these things is simply silly so long as they are collected with taxpayer dollars.

(If the GIS department does not receive state funding, then I suppose this type of cost recovery makes sense — in the same way that Sanborn or any other commercial entity would charge for it. However, I doubt that the primary client of such data isn’t the state itself, in which case it’s still taxpayer dollars covering the costs somewhere…)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 8:37 am and is filed under Locality and Space. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.