A while back, I posted about county-level GIS data available in the State of Maryland. I was very happy to see an announcement on LinkedIn that Anne Arundel County, Maryland has rolled out a new data download page that makes their GIS data freely available.
Kudos to Eric Wilson and everyone else in the Anne Arundel County GIS group for making this happen. Here’s hoping more follow suit.
We did this here over the summer. The result? One more piece of often time-intensive overhead removed; the number of FOIA requests we receive for GIS data has dropped to virtually nothing. Too bad so many local governments are busy chasing their tails on data sharing policies and selling data to realize the organizational efficiencies gained by providing the public free self-service mechanisms.
The local governments I know that have taken this steps say similar things. Have you considered publishing a before/after analysis?
It hadn’t crossed my mind, but it would be interesting. The data would be easy enough to get.
It would be interesting, and possibly even useful for other localities that may be considering heading in the same direction you did.