My GIPA request for the topographic data covering NSW has failed, because GIPA says that if the government presents the data for sale, it doesn't have to provide any other access. Problem with that is that (a) the price is exorbitant and out of any relation to the marginal cost of production, (b) what data they have for sale is about to be sold wholesale to "a big international IT company," if the Minister has any say in it. This, I think, is why LPI and the Minister have been dragging the chain on replying to my proposals, trying to get as much done as possible done on the privatisation before the public has time to react.
I haven't heard a peep from the Minister in response to my proposal that LPI crowdsource their data for National Parks, so I guess it's time to go public about it, so I sent the following to the SMH:
NSW Land and Property Information [LPI] have map databases upon which we all rely, but they contain some dangerous errors. I detail (in this modest proposal) a couple of cases where the maps are quite significantly out of alignment with reality, there are many more such cases.
This matters. In one case, NSW Parks and Wildlife (NPWS) advise that the only safe path through a field of unexploded ordnance (a former Defence firing range, you could almost say a 'mine field') is the marked path, but the path marked on our State's maps bears only a passing relationship to the actual path.
It matters, too, because peoples' lives depend upon it. You will, no doubt, remember the sad death of David Iredale in 2006. Navigational confusion played a large part in his misadventure. The Coroner recommended that NPWS improve its signs, but Iredale was only carrying a sketch map! Improved mapping, better access to maps, would have served the boys better.
Per this SMH story the state intends to privatise its mapping functions because it is 'not in a financial position to continually upgrade the services provided by the agency as technology changed.'
LPI is certainly unable to maintain accurate and up-to-date data for some areas in NSW, but the most cost-effective and effective solution is not privatisation, one part of the solution is to be found in crowdsourcing, as I outline in my proposal above.
LPI struggle with effective electronic distribution of geographic information, I would say that's because it is not in their DNA. They see Google maps and believe that if they could only find a sugar daddy to take all that useless data for money, everything would be better ... clearly, an ability to deal with commercial reality is also not in their DNA.
What should happen, now, is that LPI should forget about trying to run as a profit centre, in some mad 1980s Thatcheresque throwback, and they should take note of the Bureau of Meteorology - which runs the most accessed website in Australia by simply providing a good service needed by all. LPI should and could achieve this kind of prominence and public utility by simply giving up its (completely illusory) belief that it holds Crown Copyright in the State's topographic data, distributing it freely, and welcoming the willing collaboration of the population by crowd sourcing ... it's not like they can do it without us.
