Requesting Examples of GIS Benefit applications
Dear Colleague,

Now is the moment in which you can act to make a difference in affirming the public's right to access government geographic data. Please consider the following request.

As you know, the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) won its lawsuit against Santa Clara County last June, with the Superior Court ordering the County to provide its GIS parcel basemap for no more than the cost of duplication, as required by the California Public Records Act (CPRA). The County filed an appeal, leaving their policy unchanged (they sell their basemap data for over $ 150,000). Finally, on March 12, 2008, the Sixth District Court of Appeal issued an order requesting a full briefing.

CFAC has requested that the GIS professional community offer an Amicus Curiae brief to the Court explaining aspects of the case about which we have particular professional expertise. I am organizing the Amicus Curiae effort, soliciting input from you, and preparing an initial draft. We have an attorney, Lawrence Edelman, who will convert our information into a Court-acceptable document. We need to provide the Court with examples of public benefit from uses of GIS parcel basemaps, so they might decide that, on balance, the public interest is better served by making the County's geodata available under terms of the CPRA than by the pecuniary benefit to the County from sales of its geodata.

If you know of some GIS applications to illustrate public benefits, please let me know within the next two weeks. Your response can be (a) a short description, (b) a web link to the application, (c) some pictures of the application's maps or reports, or the physical reality being mapped.

Here are some suggestions to stimulate your response:

1 - Examples where the cost of the parcel basemap affected the outcome of the project. For example, high cost reduced the amount of coverage area to be analyzed, or reduced the amount of analysis that could be undertaken, or increased the cost to a client, the rate payers, or to taxpayers.

2 - Examples where the GIS parcel basemap was used to analyze the equity or efficiency of governmental services and operations, such as, property tax assessment, approval of development plans and building permits, street maintenance, crime prevention.

3 - Examples where the GIS parcel basemap was used to improve customer service, such as, reduced insurance rates with better flood data over parcel boundaries, increased economic activity and real estate development, more efficient delivery and transportation, effective location of service outlets for health providers, retain stores, collection centers, etc.

4 - Examples where the GIS parcel basemap was used to increase funding to government operations due to more accurate tax assessment, more precise fee determination, and more efficient collection of taxes and fees.

5 - Examples where the GIS parcel basemap was used to enhance public security, protection, response and recovery, such as providing a common operating picture for fire responders, identifying service facilities (hospitals, shelters, etc.) that are helpful to emergency response and recovery efforts, identifying the limited number of infrastructure facilities whose protection is truly critical.

Thank you, in advance, for your prompt response. With an affirmative decision by the Court of Appeal, this case may influence other public agencies that still sell their data to conform to public records access policies.

Sincerely,

Bruce Joffe (GIS.Consultants@joffes.com)

Copies of the trial court briefs, the trial court's 27-page opinion and order, and the briefs that have previously been filed in the court of appeal can be found on CFAC's web site at http://www.cfac.org/content/litigation.php.

A description of the arguments in the case is downloadable from www.OpenDataConsortium.org entitled, "detailed analysis of Santa Clara County Lawsuit".

In addition, letters of opposition to California bill AB1978 are still encouraged. Background here: http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=2701