jo's super rough draft:
Public geographic information is the bedrock of how civil society is managed in an information age. 80% of the information collected by government has a geographic element. In the US, public domain access to state-collected geographic data is driving a new technology boom in local, mobile services.
This week the Environment Committee of the European Parliament is debating the INSPIRE Directive establishing a spatial data infrastructure in Europe. If passed INSPIRE will entrench a policy of government agencies “recovering their costs” from each other and from citizens. INSPIRE threatens to prevent job and business creation in Europe in a new industry making use of Europe's GALILEO positioning satellite network.
The cheapest and easiest way to allow the national mapping agencies of Europe to collaborate with each other, and to let local government agencies co-operate, is by making state-collected geographic data openly available to the public.
The Open Knowledge Foundation, based in Cambridge UK is supporting Public Geodata, a public petition to MEPs to reject the INSPIRE Directive. Reject INSPIRE: http://rejectinspire.publicgeodata.org/
Public Geodata: http://publicgeodata.org/
Press Contact: Benjamin Henrion bh@udev.org