Proceedings of the Workshop on Promoting Access to Scientific and Technical Data for the Public Interest An Assessment of Policy Options (1999) / Chapter Skim
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7 Government-Sector Data
7 Government-Sector Data
Pages 139-152
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From page 139... ...
study committee developed a set of five questions to guide the discussion this afternoon (Box 7.~. The first is to identify and discuss the principal benefits or opportunities with respect to data production or dissemination activities in the government sector, occasioned by the current legal and policy regimes.
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From page 140... ...
to the first question, for the USGS, the principal benefit of the current legal and policy regimes was actually laid out fairly well by Justin Hughes when he made reference to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-130 If the public .
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From page 141... ...
There are no questions about the ownership of the underlying technical information. The other aspect of the current policy regime, as far as NIST is concerned as a data provider, is that if we provide data collections that are not covered by copyright, then they wouldn't be covered under copyright under any of the new regimes under consideration, at least the misappropriation model.
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From page 142... ...
After the International Geophysical Year in 1957, the International Council of Scientific Unions set up the World Data Center system, which was designed to exchange data from the various experiments. The NCDC is the World Data Center-A for meteorology.
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From page 143... ...
As a result, the price was reduced for the commercial users because the data set is created now, and maintenance costs aren't nearly as high as the development costs, which included geographic information system implications and mapping indications that were added work, other than straight data. The Maryland legislature decided that these were benefits to the individual citizens.
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From page 144... ...
At NTST we don't have any significant problems with the current policy regime in this country. However, we do have a problem with the E.U.'s Database Directive, which presents a different policy.
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From page 145... ...
MR. HUGHES: The other virtue of something like this is that not only would it help Congress understand all the good work our federal agencies do, but it would also tell citizens where to go back and look for the original data.
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From page 146... ...
A perfect example is Jim Ostell's presentation when he talked about comparing gene sequences and colon cancer. For example, can you imagine the power of the scientific inquiry if you were then to superimpose incidences of colon cancer with data that we have for soils or surficial geology, looking at incidences of colon cancer with water quality data from the same geographical area, chemical data from the agricultural industry, and the fate and transport of agricultural contaminants or other chemicals in the environment?
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From page 147... ...
DR. KAYSER: From an intellectual property point of view, I am not sure that other database producers or data product disseminators have any effect on NIST's data activities at all, other than that NIST cares about what other organizations are doing so that we can ensure that our efforts are complementary to theirs and not overlapping.
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From page 148... ...
Under state law, we have some protection so that we can de-identify the data or have a licensing agreement that might prevent the leakage and identification of individuals enforced with civil penalties, IRB sanctions, preventing user access to data, etc. We are trying to protect the privacy of individuals.
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From page 149... ...
DR. KAYSER: The Standard Reference Data Act, which was passed in 196S, empowered NTST to recover the full cost of essentially all data activities-everything related to producing the databases, ranging from compilation, evaluation, packaging, as well as distnbution and administrative costs.
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From page 150... ...
DR. KAYSER: ~ wanted to make one qualification of my comment, and that is that NIST subscribes completely to the OMB Circular A- [30 principle that Justin Hughes outlined earlier.
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From page 151... ...
The current policy of OMB Circular A-130 will probably still be in effect five years from now, which will largely be for the public good. It may have some minor modifications that we talked about earlier, for example, about credit to the original government data sources so that our agencies still exist five years from now, and that the public can, in fact, benefit from our information.
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From page 152... ...
have been over the past five years. Even though we are talking about legal and policy issues, the enabling technology has to be a factor in these discussions because it influences what we do and how we do the database generation, dissemination the related and all the aspects, and especially the cost.
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