A Local-State Government Spatial Data Sharing Partnership

Chapter 5 – Results of Partnership Case Studies at State Government Level
local governments or 28% had signed the formal agreement for supply of data, with
another 40 local governments indicating they were prepared to enter into an agreement.
It was expected that up by the end of 2002, 90 LGAs would be participating in the data
exchange (Stanton 2002). However, by May 2003, only 54 local governments or 43% had
signed the PLI agreement which represented only 25% of the state population base (Barker
2003). The reasons identified by the Department for the poor performance of the PLI
included personality issues within local government, lack of incentives and issues relating
to intellectual property. With the lack of support from the larger and more powerful local
governments in the south-eastern corner of the state, the project went into a period of
inactivity.
In 2003, the Department employed a senior staff member from interstate who had previous
experience in dealing with local-state government data sharing, and importantly, issues
relating to the impact of access and pricing of data. In March 2004, the DNRM&W
introduced a new policy on access and pricing of spatial data which had a dramatic and
almost immediate impact. The new policy promoted a more open access and exchange of
data at minimal or no cost. In September 2004, a new data sharing and exchange
agreement was developed to replace the old PLI agreement. The key to this agreement
was that LGAs could receive the digital mapbase and other products for free in exchange
for their address data. This completely changed the attitudes of LGAs and by the end of
2004 approximately 85 local governments had signed, and by early 2006, all but six of the
125 local governments had signed the new data share agreements.
Agreements
During the PLI project, two different agreements were utilised. The first agreement
developed in 1998 and was a full data supply agreement that was based on a royalty
model. The second agreement commenced in 2004 was a data sharing agreement that did
not involve the payment of incentives or exchange of monies. Each of these agreements is
now briefly described.
Original PLI (Pre March 2004)
The original PLI agreement was developed in 1998, under the existing DNR pricing and
access policies which were characterised by partial cost recovery and significant
limitations on the data use. The agreement allowed local governments a small initial
payment for their property and address data, and then a variable royalty payment at the end
of the licensing period based on the volume of sales of the PLI by the State Government.
The royalty payment from the sales of the data was to be distributed on the basis of 85% to
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