[ILUG] Open Streetmap finishes TIGER import...

[Justin Mason]

fuzzix writes:
> Gareth Eason wrote:
> > The TIGER data is available in the US since data collected using 
> > public funds (i.e. taxes collected from citizens) must be made 
> > available to the public. This is the complete opposite of the UK and 
> > Ireland's Ordnance Survey system, where they collect data using taxes
> > we pay, and then charge us to see any of that data, with many 
> > restrictions applied.
> 
> I used to work for $government_department - faced with a metric-buttload
> of bureaucracy surrounding OSI maps... Dealt with datasets about
> $poorly_conceived_EU_directive. This data is a freebie but is useless
> without the underlying raster telling you where this shape actually lies.

They use raster data, rather than vectors throughout?  that sounds odd!

> Quite a strange thing to ask someone to fork over for free shapes and a
> map made by someone who died of extreme old age 40 years ago.

Definitely.

One interesting side-effect of the Ordnance Survey model, at least in the
UK, is that the taxpayers wind up paying for it twice -- once for the
initial surveying (performed by the OS, funded by taxes), and again when
local government needs the data to build roads etc (since local councils
are treated as paying customers by the OS).

--j.