Geoff Maas 1

Bio: Geoff Maas has served as the MetroGIS Coordinator at the Metropolitan Council in St Paul since April 2012. He has a bachelors in Geography and masters’ degree in urban and regional planning with over 20 years of experience working in the fields of planning, GIS, cartography and visual communications in the private, public and non-profit sectors. Additionally, he teaches a graduate-level course in GIS for students of planning and public policy at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

Free and Open Geospatial Data in Minnesota: Policy and Practice

In 2014 and 2015, nine Minnesota counties formally adopted policy statements to make their geospatial data freely and openly available, with several other counties making their data available without a formal policy. This breaks with over two decades of established practice of local governments charging for and requiring license agreements for access to their spatial data. This presentation will provide context on the history and development of data availability in Minnesota, the evolution of policy and practice toward open data, the adoption of new open data policies in 2014-15; as well as an overview of the benefits being realized of open data for both the data producers and consumers and an introduction to the resources available.

Free and open geospatial data, geospatial data policy, inter-governmental cooperation, open data