Praise for Manitoba's open data policy

Michael Cross, Canada proves itself to be genuine land of the free, The Guardian, August 10, 2006. Excerpt:

The government of Manitoba says it was the first in Canada to make all its publicly funded geospatial data freely available, without any licensing terms, to government, businesses and citizens. This is the policy that Technology Guardian's Free our Data campaign calls on the UK government to adopt.

Officials say that the Manitoba Land Initiative, adopted in 2000, is based on sound business sense. "Frankly, it just did not make good economic sense to try and sell data that the taxpayers already paid for, and it was costing us much more to try to sell data and manage distribution then we were making in revenue," says Harvey Pokrant, director of the information technology services branch in the provincial capital Winnipeg....

This is a vivid contrast to the UK government approach, which encourages state bodies holding data to treat it as intellectual property and to charge for its use, even by other parts of government....

In theory, freeing data along the Manitoba model should make life easier for officials creating policies for environmental protection, managing natural resources and encouraging investment in the province. It should also encourage the private sector to create value-added products based on public data. Pokrant says there is evidence that this is happening....