Before I get on with my comments let me introduce myself to the group. My name is Mike Mepham and I am a member of the GeoBase Steering Committee. In fact, I was in on the founding of GeoBase in 2000/2001 and have been active with it ever since. I have 19+ years with Saskatchewan's geomatics agencies and am currently on secondment to the federal government tasked with helping to continue and enhance the cooperative geomatics programs between the 14 governments in Canada (federal, 10 provincial, and 3 territorial). A couple of things I am not - I am not an employee of the Government of Canada although they provide me with my work facilities. I am still employed by one of the provincial governments. Also I am not the technical go to guy.
I have two objectives with this note - The first is to clarify exactly what GeoBase is and is not. Hopefully I can help clear up some of the confusion I have noticed in some in the postings to this discussion group. The second is to enter into a discussion about what this group is trying to do, why, and how we can work together or at least not get in each others way. What is GeoBase? GeoBase is a collaborative partnership of the federal, provincial, and territorial governments working to wards a vision of "Fundamental geographic data of choice for Canada - collected once, maintained and available without restrictions". The idea is to ensure that any data collection only takes place once and the results shared. Also, every effort is made to ensure that the agency responsible for the content of the mapping is the agency that is "closest" to the items being mapped. For example, many of the municipal roads in GeoBase are mapped by the municipality itself who provide the data to the province who add it to the provincial roads mapped by their department of transportation and then the whole is submitted to GeoBase for inclusion in the portal. So please do not refer to GeoBase data as federal data. While some of it is federally sourced most of it is municipally, territorially, or provincially sourced and made available through the collaborative partnership. There are several attributes (not data base attributes) that the data must have to be included in GeoBase. These include that it is expected to be authoritative, maintained, freely available, etc. For full details on this and more on how the partnership works I strongly recommend reading the GeoBase Principles, Policies, and Procedures <http://www.geobase.ca/doc/GeoBase-ppp-v1_5_en.pdf> (PPP) document. It will give you a better understanding of the animal you are dealing with. Some Questions Let me start by making it clear that I am asking these questions to help my understanding. Nothing here is intended to stop, or delay the groups progress in loading the GeoBase information into the OSM. My first question has to be "Why are you doing this?". I have spent some time looking through the OSM web site and I understand the rational for building street maps where none exist or at least are not generally available but that is not the case here. I know of at least two other complete downloads of the GeoBase data for redistribution but still do not fully understand the reasons for replication / duplication. Secondly - How does this group expect maintenance to work? When the data suppliers pass updates to the GeoBase portal team and those updates are made available then GeoBase and OSM will be out of sync. What are the expectations on how or when they will be brought back into sync? And finally, for now, Are there any comments or questions you would like to direct to the GeoBase Steering Committee? We don't always hear back from those who are using the GeoBase portal and it's data but want to. Please speak up if you have something to say to us. In closing I would like to suggest that you also check out the video at YouTube that shows some of the research we have been involved with looking at interoperability of diverse geomatics data bases. The video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIZLc_qHYZc in English and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXvUqWVtjQo in French. Thanks for your time. Mike Mepham Federal/Provincial/Territorial Liaison GeoConnections Program Natural Resources Canada E-Mail: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Ottawa Regina Phone: (613) 992-8549 (306) 780-3634 Fax: (613) 947-2410 (306) 780-5191 Address: 06Ath Floor, Room. 646R 615 Booth Street Ottawa, ON Canada K1A 0E9 100 Central Park Place 2208 Scarth Street Regina, SK Canada S4P 2J6
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