Cass County, Indiana Not Ok with Sharing Parcel Data with State
The Cass County commissioners said “not so fast” (corrected per comment; originally said “no,” ABS, 8/25/08) to the Indiana Geological Survey in response to a request for access to its parcel data. The article confuses me since at one point it says it’ll cost $7000/year for the county to pay for the Web software: “for setting up and maintaining the Web-based technology.” A grant would cover two years.
At another point the article says the state wants a copy. “It is always the citizens of your county who own that information,” [State GIO Jim] Sparks said. “We’re asking for a copy of it.” The former implies (to me) the county serving up its own data (that would have a cost). The latter implies (to me) the state would take a copy (which would have a limited, if small, cost).
From what I read at the IndianaMap site actual copies of the vector data are hosted at the The Indiana Geological Survey, so it is a copy. The “Web-based technology” is elsewhere described as “data transfer technology.”
The unfortunate part of this story (and many parallel ones) is that it’s still tough to convince the data providers of the benefit of sharing.
