Legal and Socioeconomic Committee

This is the home of the GSDI Legal and Economic Working group. We also support the Legal and Economic Working Group Discussion List. If you would like to join the working group, fill out the registration information to join the discussion list and the chair of the working group will be in contact.

The working group is chaired by Bastiaan van Loenen with vice-chairs Katleen Janssen and Pakorn Apaphant.

As established by the GSDI Bylaws:

The Legal and Socioeconomic Working Group explores the legal and economic frameworks within which spatial data infrastructures are developed within individual nations and multi-nation regions. It encourages dialogue in regard to varying public policy and legal approaches and explores models, approaches, and experiences that may enhance cooperation among nations in sharing spatial data and spatial technologies. The committee identifies, acquires, analyzes, and reports to GSDI Association members policies or legislation being adopted or considered by national, regional (multi-nation) or international law bodies that might be relevant to the goals of the GSDI Association or otherwise affect the global development of spatial data infrastructures. The committee shall propose and develop statements if needed in support of the goals of the organization, propose and draft responses to legislation that may be adverse to those goals, and develop approaches for communicating with legislators, agency personnel, and other policy makers.

This group has been active in past GSDI conferences in organizing workshops and sessions addressing legal, economic and institutional issues in the implementation of spatial data infrastructures. Past objectives of the working group have included: (1) preparation of detailed descriptions of the legal and economic frameworks of selected nations and (2) the preparation and distribution of a legal and economics framework survey. If you have ideas to share, please join us.

Workplan 2011-2012

In the meeting of the Legal and Socio-Economic Working Group at GSDI 12 in Singapore, it was agreed that we would try to work towards a global licensing framework for geographic data, starting from existing frameworks and licence models. The working plan towards GSDI 13 is as follows:

In short, we will collect existing material on (national and international) licensing frameworks, collect and compare the key components thereof and categorize them in a number of ‘common denominator’ groups. Based on these groups, we would like to develop a framework of several types of licences that could be used globally and increase transparency of the conditions for obtaining and using spatial data. The intention is to avoid making up new things if it is not necessary, but also to accommodate possible differences between organizations/cultures/financing models, etc.

We aim at the following time schedule:

- Mid January 2011: collection of materials

- Mid March 2011: analysis of licences and categorizing main components

- September 2011: draft licences open for consultation

- December 2011: end of consultation round

- May 2012 (GSDI 13): second draft of licences ready

Links of interest to the Legal and Socioeconomic community:

* SDI Performance Measurement

* Spatial Data Infrastructure Literature Search. Any references to new relevant legal and economic literature is very welcome at b.vanloenen@tudelft.nl.

* SDI legal and economic research and researchers

* SDI education at universities around the world

* Peer reviewed journals of substantial interest to the international development and information technology communities.