Should we share spatial information?

I believe that sharing information is positive in several aspects. It helps to encourage progress in a number of social, economic, and environmental development sectors. This saves time and resources in generation of information. In many cases, instead of producing information that already exists, the resources can be invested in improving the processes, starting from what is already done.

Likewise, I consider that access to information should be free, as long as the source is mentioned, especially if this information is generated by public institutions and is focused on education, research and development. For example, as a personal experience, I was part of a team in charge of getting spatial information and multisectoral data in a public institution. The geographical information that I generated, fed the National Information System (SNI http://sni.gob.ec/inicio), the official entity, in charge of centralizing statistics and geographic information generated by public institutions in Ecuador, and now as a teacher, I am a user of that information. I often use the data provided by SNI, to teach about use and importance as a source of geographic information of the country. My point in mentioning this example is to emphasize that many sectors can benefit from free access to geographic information.

On the other hand, I agree that the generation of information always has a cost, but that cost could be recovered with a charge for access to information in cases where the use of that information helps a commercial purpose.

Image from: http://www.unep.org/

Free access to geographic data in different formats (.csv, .shp, .gpx, and others) allows contributing to the GIS community and students of both undergraduate and graduate levels, to solve issues of local or regional development.

Finally, public policies should be designed to allow the use of spatial data among institutions. This could be supported by an inter-institutional cooperation agreement. This process will allow mutual growth and development and use of research results that can benefit the whole community. Thus, policies around this issue, allow an articulated comprehensive development focused on development. 

The free access to geographic data in different formats (.csv, .shp, .gpx, and others) allows contributing to the GIS community and students of both undergraduate and graduate levels, to solve issues of local or regional development.