Details of a new, must read PDF published by the NSGIC on  geospatial data sharing

Recently on the All About Data blog, Dale Lutz of Safe Software shared an interesting post. In his thread Dale discussed a colleague who recently attended the NSGIC annual conference and touted the new Geospatial Data Sharing Guidelines for Best Practices document.

Of particular interest, Dale commented, "The document itself is clearly targeted at the much broader audience than just the geospatial professionals who normally rub shoulders to talk about these sorts of things. For example, I may start using the definition it provides for Geospatial Data the next time I’m asked at a dinner party what I do for a living."

Dale goes on to describe the meat of the document and why it will be of interest to you. Of particular interest I though was Dales mention of the 3 myths about the open sharing of geospatial data:
- organizations can pay for GIS operations through data charges
- potential security risk of making data available.
- the issue of perceived liability from the use of open data

About the document -  At just 4 pages in length, the PDF is a nice, short, but meaty read. It starts off setting the tone by noting that the NSGIC believes that the open sharing of geospatial data is in the best interest of all (clap). Detailed info is then offered up on open data policies, the value of public access to data, and then samples of data use. 

Since public data are created to support public business endeav-ors, data sharing is an exercise in accountability, not a liability con-cern. Governments are protected from liability for reasonable data errors. The value of data sharing to both the provider and the con-sumer far outweighs any risk.