Licensing Geographic Data and Services (2004) / Chapter Skim
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8 Licensing Decisions and Strategies
8 Licensing Decisions and Strategies
Pages 177-204
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From page 177... ...
8 Licensing Decisions and Strategies 8.1 INTRODUCTION Drawing on the analyses from the preceding three chapters, this chapter presents a menu of options that government may use to decide whether and how to license geographic data and services from and to the private sector. For cases in which licensing is appropriate, the chapter addresses ways to make licensing a more versatile tool, and explores license-based approaches that might satisfy the broadest range of stakeholders.1 There is no intent by the committee through the presentation of this material to convey explicitly or implicitly a general preference for or against acquisition of geographic data and services through licensing.
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government choices affect "the marketplace." FIGURE 8-1 Steps in the decision-making process for geographic data acquisition and distribution. Arrows indicate points in the decision process when it is valuable to revisit earlier components of the decision sequence.
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Recommendation: Before entering into data acquisition negotiations, agencies should confirm the extent of data redistribution required by their mandates and missions, government information policies, needs across government, and the public interest. In this section, we suggest rules of thumb that agencies can use to refine geographic data acquisition decisions in support of their mandates and missions.
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As discussed in Chapter 4, Section 4.2.5.1, licensing data from the private sector can sometimes result in substantial benefits at minimal direct cost. For example, Palm Beach County, Florida, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
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Conse quently, government acquisition of commercially licensed data that allows the public and news agencies to view but not acquire data may be a viable alternative. However, citizens may be inter ested in learning or need to know the details of a specific operational situation (e.g., the dispatching events on September 11, 2001)
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8.3.2.1 Data of Regulatory or Policy Importance When government uses geographic data to promulgate regulations, formulate policy, or take other actions that affect the rights and obligations of citizens, there is a compelling interest in making these data available so that the public may understand, support, or challenge government decisions.6 This interest often will be served by acquiring unlimited rights in data, but also may be accommodated in some circumstances by licensing data under conditions that permit access for more limited purposes. For example, in some cases, the public may need access only to views derived from satellite data, rather than the underlying data themselves.
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Often, government data are used in basic and targeted research both inside and outside the government to support public purposes. A government agency should obtain broad rights for public dissemination when the geographic data it acquires are likely to be useful in follow-on research and development activities.8 When the broad public benefits of research are clear, it is appropriate for government data to be used for those purposes and, as such, to be provided at _____________ 7The term open access is sometimes used in this context.
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In such cases, it may be appropriate for the government to acquire broad redistribution rights. A previous National Research Council report has suggested, for example, that environmental data should follow a "tree" model in which a government-funded _____________ 9Currently, there are indeed low technical barriers to copying geographic data, and the geographic data community has yet to develop the infrastructure and incentives that would allow efficient and effective sharing and exchange of geographic data among large numbers of dispersed actors (see Chapter 9, Section 9.3, for potential approaches for addressing these issues)
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Technical specifications for govern ment data should be based on the needs of the procuring agency and its participating stakeholders.14 Government does not have sufficient information to choose the best solution for complex technical problems that are outside its domain. Privately held information about potential downstream uses of government data in the marketplace is best elicited and supplied by the private commercial sector.
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_____________ 15Uplift rights in a license allow future purchases by specified parties under specified terms and conditions without the need to negotiate a new license.
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Therefore, when an agency's mandates and missions specify consideration of such uses, an agency will need to consider the needs of such constituencies before licensing data subject to reuse restrictions. The needs of parties external to an agency's mandates and missions may be accommodated through government's broad information policies as specified by its laws.
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This section provides a menu of licensing models for agencies to consider when licensing privately owned data and discusses strategies for government licensing of data to other groups. 8.4.1 Designing Licenses in the Public Interest Having decided what mission goals a license needs to accomplish, agencies must select the right tool for the job.
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, the U.S. Census Bureau stated "The Census Bureau was unable to reach agreement with the mapping companies on these issues for an acceptable cost; acceptable generally means at a price lower than if the Census Bureau undertook the work itself." 18Gene Colabatistto, Space Imaging, personal communication Dec.
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have renewed their emphasis on long-term, bulk-sales agreements. Such risk management is particularly important to satellite data vendors, who face high fixed costs and an uncertain market.
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For example, local governments often trade government data for access to private data. Provided that such data trades do not interfere with government's dissemination mission, the practice may be commendable.
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In the geospatial community, commercial products gain value by being compatible with government maps and digital geographic data. In recent years, local governments and commercial mapmakers and data providers have donated data to federal agencies (e.g., the U.S.
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Best-efforts clauses will only exacerbate this problem. 8.4.2.2 Purchasing Adequate Uplift Rights Uplift provisions in a license allow future acquisitions by specified parties under specified terms and conditions without the need to negotiate a new license.
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Nevertheless, uplift rights may be underused. Negotiators who obtain uplift rights must pay higher prices and incur additional negotiating expense.
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Vendors may attract others to their Web site by offering indexes and links to public and private datasets. Royalties also may be collected if and when the links _____________ 27Many of the large data vendors who appeared before the committee remarked that they had never tried to enforce license terms or other contract rights against violators (Chapter 4, Section 4.4.1)
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The TerraServer online library of satellite imagery provides a more recent example. 8.4.2.4 Government Accountability Some agencies need broader public dissemination rights than others in responding to their mandates and missions.
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. Although online users can view and print combinations of detailed local information, they cannot download the underlying local government databases.
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The same also applies to many-though not all -- state and local government agencies. These restrictions usually limit the ability of federal agencies and many local agencies to recover fees above the marginal cost of distribution.
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Many local government agency experiments in cost recovery sought prices beyond what most of the potential market was willing to pay, and so, buyers chose to do without the data or found substitute data. Local governments often found it cumbersome or politically impractical to embrace the price discrimination and other market segmentation strategies that their commercial competitors adopted.
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Agencies choosing to distribute data under license should offer similar terms. The October 1998 version of Canada's Radarsat license provides an example of minimally restrictive government data licensing.
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Qualifications-based selection procurement accompanied by subsequent cost negotiations and, when appropriate, traditional competitive bidding practices can help agencies obtain the best possible terms. Recommendation: Agencies should dedicate resources to training and knowledge-sharing among agencies in order to extract maximum public benefit from licensing.
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202 LICENSING GEOGRAPHIC DATA AND SERVICES convenient venue through which agencies can report and learn from their experiences.
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...Today's retrieval methods typically are limited to keyword searches or matches of substrings, offering no support for any deeper structures that might lie hidden in the data or that people typically use to reason; therefore, users often may miss critical information when searching the Web. ...The advent of the Semantic Web promises better retrieval methods by incorporating the data's semantics and exploiting the semantics during the search process."37 Dianne Hamilton has created a land-ownership-parcel dataset and would like to make it known and available to the world.
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Hamilton helps the Spatial Semantic Web reach its greatest functionality and thereby enhances discovery and usage of her offerings. In the end, the Spatial Semantic Web dream comes down to this: Can a combined technological and licensing infrastructure be developed that supports easy and efficient online entry of licensing and technical information?
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