Comments on: Why ESRI's GeoData.gov – Data.gov Contract Gets the Community Upset

By: undisclosed

undisclosed — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:29:21 +0000

Shape files are a horrid format that should go away. Sure, it served a purpose at one time, but that time has come and gone. And the company that wrought this proprietary format upon the world, E.S.R.I. will not support it.

By: Data.gov is dead. Long live open data! – GeoNode

Data.gov is dead. Long live open data! – GeoNode — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:02:03 +0000

[...] slated to become. Why? Many claim the platform was not as open as it could be, in some cases requiring proprietary software to make use of the data. While such a public-private partnership can sometimes be efficient, a [...]

By: News Roundup – Bilski, Google Phases Out Windows (Maybe), GeoData.gov

News Roundup – Bilski, Google Phases Out Windows (Maybe), GeoData.gov — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:12:31 +0000

[...] Gorman at Off the Map hit the nail on the head when summarizing the community’s sentiment on the ESRI GeoData.gov contract. If you haven’t been following this, in a nutshell ESRI has a no-bid contract with the Feds [...]

By: charles

charles — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 01:33:55 +0000

This closed no-bid contract process is not just bad data policy, but a continuation of the same old corrupt practices. ESRI is getting payback for political favors or contributions, and the public is suffering the consequences.

By: Andrew Zolnai

Andrew Zolnai — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:16:42 +0000

Exactly – someone in the US GAO has lost the plot, and/or forgot to check all the marks in their to-do list. List which our industry took pains to draw up on behalf of the citizens. And they/we are the paymasters not the guv… Other contract extensions in US Air Force Academy and Forestry Service, I think, followed that same path, shall we call it of least resistance?

By: Sean Gorman

Sean Gorman — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:43:21 +0000

Well at least we can all agree that it is not open. I have no beef with ArcGIS.com. It is ESRI’s tool – they spend the money and can use it how ever they like.

My beef is when a Federal contract is created to make open government data delivered there not accessible in open formats. Especially when that same privilege is not made available to the myriad sites that do make government data available in open formats.

ESRI has explicitly tied ArcGIS.com into their GeoData.gov and Data.gov contract as a delivery mechanism to citizens. It is not “ESRI user” data. It is government data that my and many others tax payer dollars paid for. I don’t think many tax payers would be happy about their money going to lining ArcGIS.com with content.

You can’t have both a closed portal just for your users and use it as mechanism to deliver open government data to citizens. The two are mutually exclusive by any reasonable public policy test.

By: Andrew Zolnai

Andrew Zolnai — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 08:52:16 +0000

Marten Hogeweg siad it best in his blog
http://martenhogeweg.blogspot.com/2010/06/building-your-own-arcgiscom-client.html
“ArcGIS.com provides a great collection of resources and, as Jack explains below, allows other people to discover the work ESRI users are doing.”
emphasis on “ESRI users”, this is not meant to be open to start with…

By: Sean Gorman

Sean Gorman — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 13:39:57 +0000

Thanks for all the good points. I hesitated for a while about writing this post because I did not want it to come across as a case of sour grapes. I think that ESRI did a nice job with ArcGIS.com. It is a huge improvement over ArcGISonline.com and you have to give them points for seeing innovation in the market place and responding to it.

Competition is good in my mind. It demonstrates there is real opportunity in the space. Geo is no longer niche and all these are great indicators for everyone in the space. It is exciting seeing companies like SimpleGeo and SoGeo getting significant funding from notable VC’s.

While this is all great. If we are not vigilant about keeping data open we kill the real opportunity in the space for everyone. There may be some short term gains in pushing proprietary formats, but it keeps GIS as an IT niche, and prevents us from being a part of a much bigger market and opportunity.

It is also not just about business. As we’ve seen in Haiti, Chile, Afghanistan and countless other disasters – open and portable data saves lives. No one has times trying to find a proprietary tool and the appropriate license when responding to a disaster. When there is no Internet – “mapping services” don’t work. This is why access to raw data is so critical. It makes data portable, remixable and reusable in any situation.

Hopefully our government and others truly embraces the concept and these contracts and approaches to government data are speed bumps as we evolve to concept.

By: The Lone Geographer

The Lone Geographer — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 12:56:47 +0000

Wow, it’s not even a very good platform. It’s not scalable, open, or extensible.

What a shame.

By: David Sonnen

David Sonnen — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 18:11:53 +0000

It seems like we should know what “open” means by now. This scenario (“open” label, opaque process) has been repeated dozens of times with the same and, by now predictable, results.

Need a lesson? Try searching for cloud+ultimate+lock-in and read the first 10-500 results.

Personally, I am a huge fan of Data.gov, Geodata.gov and ESRI. I believe that each group does want to make a positive difference. But, open data means the data is open to any use, not just through mapping services or “free”.

Making data really open is harder than providing a convenient way to access the data through a single platform. But, if the Feds want their data to be open, they need to make the effort needed.

Otherwise, the Feds need to say “convenient” — not “open”.

Users really do know the difference.