The title of this article is also the title of which I have spoken to the Barcamp InnovatoriPA 2010 which was held on May 19 at the New Fair of Rome. The meeting which was held in Rome has been nothing short of positive. He breathed an air of innovation and, above all, innovation in the sense of release data of the Public Administration! And so, after I've registered to attend the event on the relevant website, I decided to try to make a contribution in venturing a presentation of type IGNITE concerning the release of the geographical data of the PA due to OpenStreetMap.

The official logo of OpenStreetMap

I must admit that at the Barcamp InnovatoriPA have managed to breathe an air of innovation for the release of data from the PA unexpected for me. I had the pleasure to sit at the round table discussions that dealt with the Open (OpenParlamento, Open Innovation and meta data without permission) and it was really a great experience. We hope that you can actually go to this kind of innovation ...

Personally, the goal of my presentation - that will summarize in a few words - was to highlight the importance that in recent years have taken geographical data in daily life. And 'now common practice to use services such as Google Maps, rather than the so-called satellite navigation systems and the like. However, most of the services that we use for the consultation of geographical data, make use of database "closed", in the sense that the data contained in the database (and of course the same database) and represented on the maps we use can not be exploited in differently from mere consultation.

Yet there is a way to take advantage of geographic data freely. My statement is embodied by some simple assumptions:

1) The Public Administration is the holder of an enormous amount of geographical data. Proof of this are the facilities like the National Cartographic Portal or the many regional portals that meettono available geographic data more or less complex. The handicap, however, is that the data is always distributed under licenses that do not allow the reuse of data. This is not good! Least because those data were acquired / developed with public money and I do not see why you should pay for being able to have in a different way from mere consultation!

2) To date, there are both tools, both legal instruments to open the geographic data of the PA and make it free!

The software tool is called OpenStreetMap . We have already spoken of this project and here I add just do not think it would be so farfetched an idea to use it freely contributing through the donation of geographical data in possession of the PA.

Even more important, to date there is the legal instrument for fire data of the PA and this tool is, in fact, licensed to grant the data. If until now the most popular licenses for the release of the data and information have been the Creative Commons, a little less than a year we also have the new license ODbL to dismiss the databases and the data they contain.

So the question we should ask is: what future for the map data (and not only) of the PA? Discuss.

We free the data of the PA with OpenStreetMap

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