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Should Taxpayers Pay Twice For Weather Data?
theodp writes "Thanks to O.M.B. Circular A-130, taxpayers now enjoy free access to SEC, Patent Office, and IRS data over the Internet. Now the Bush administration must decide whether to order the National Weather Service to make taxpayer-funded weather readings freely available on the Net, ignoring complaints from an industry trade group that doing so violates pre-Internet era agreements."
This is gonna kick up a storm.
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Step 2 is dead people.
Australia does this. The result is lots of dead pilots and boaters every year because they didn't pay the money to get the services they need. The result is that other people end up paying far more for everything since the gov't is being too cheap.
As the weather changes for the worse recently, freely available weather data could possibly save lives.
Highlighted by a recent incident where heavy rain fell, a river rose, and 700 people were evacuated at 1am in a camp ground. On the news a 10yo kid recounted how the water was ankle deep in his tent, when the family was woken for evac. Some hours later only the tent tops were visible.
The commercial weather incumbent couldnt warn these people. A camper in the internet cafe might of.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
They'll skip options one and two and head straight to Option Three:
Declare the weather a matter of national security, and order that it be classified as sensitive material immediately.
Data our taxes pay for, is public domain.
I don't think the courts would allow it any other way (should it get that far). If it does... think about what this could lead to:
- private companies like lexis-nexus being the only access to things like the Library of congress?
- private news networks the only way to read bills proposed on the state or federal level?
- Law Student need to read cases? Be prepaired to pay CourtTV several hundred dollars a month for access.
The Supreme Court is pretty conservative by any account, and tend to favor business over citizens rights (in the past 10 years)... but there's no way even they would let this one slip by.
Even their statements: public domain.
Data government creates is for the people.
This article had nothing to do with making current weather information free! It is allready free, the US has the best weather service in the world, is the top country in the world for weather research, and its all FREE!! Check out MeteoFrance's website, you have to pay for info. Before you have a knee-jerk reaction: RTFA.
Personally, I don't think its a big issue, the only people who need a CD of archived data for the whole US would be researchers. As far as if you were curious about old weather data for your hometown you could probably go to your local weather field office and ask them for it (or check their website).
Is this slashdot.org or slashdot.org.us?
Don't assume "taxpayer" is well defined, 'cos it aint. Only some of us live in the USA.
I'm a student studying meteorology. I've got a lot of data and software available to me when I'm at school that simply isn't available when I'm not there. It's frustrating to search for certain data and find that it's unavailable.
The private weather industry reached an agreement with the NWS before the internet that defined the seperation between the two. There were certain things that private industry would not do that the government would. It set the responsibilities for both. However, with advances in technology and lower costs, private weather can perform many tasks that the government legitimately does. Thus, NOAA believes it's time to redefine the boundary between the two. Presumably this would allow for some overlap.
Government has always been responsible for things such as soundings, radars, and issuing watches and warnings. There's many other things the NWS does as well. NOAA has attempted to make data available to the public whenever possible. For example, you can get a lot of radar data shortly after it's received from a NOAA ftp site. This is a good thing.
The way I see it is private industry has spent lots of money investing in things the NWS already does. Instead of just accepting this, they want to make money by taking over things that are normally done by the government and reducing the government's role.
Research is rarely profitable in the short term. It's an investment. Research in the meteorological community is ongoing. Constantly, work is being done to improve the data collected, our understanding of the weather, and the methods used to analyze the data. By taking things such as radar out of the hands of the government, we sacrifice the research that is currently being done. Remember, private industry isn't going to make the investment in research that the government is. After all, research doesn't make a profit quickly and doesn't impress investors.
IMHO, private industry is overstepping their bounds here. They're infringing into things the government already does. And they're pretending to be the victims in this.
If private industry gets their way, everyone who doesn't have a financial stake in this loses.
If Wx data were publically available, we run the risk of weathermen like this instead of the highly trained media professionals we have now.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
You're absolutely correct. But this is about more than disseminating data.
Private industry wants to take over actually collecting the data. They can't tell the NWS what to do with data the NWS collects, but they want to take collection of data out of the NWS' control. That's what the article is saying.
What's so wrong about this is research is rarely profitable in a short period of time. Industry is about impressing shareholders as much as it is about producing a product. I'm of the opinion that taking data collection out of the hands of the government will stifle research to improve our ability to collect this data.
This is extremely important, especially in areas such as radar. The WSR-88D radars, many of which were deployed in the early 1990s, were developed through years of research. They have the important feature that their predecessors don't of being able to detect motion, not just reflectivity. This allows meteorologists to detect things such as rotation and better issue warnings (particularly tornado warnings)! It's important that this research continue.
That's really why private industry's stance on this is dangerous and flawed.
This decision has already been made, in the first week of December.
Not only that, the already-made decision has been covered by slashdot, not once, but twice! (If a duplicate story is "dupe", perhaps an incorrect triplicate story should be referred to, appropriately, as "tripe".)
And the answer is a resounding no, taxpayers will NOT have to "pay twice" for access to weather data.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week began providing weather data in an open-access XML format, alleviating concerns that commercial providers would continue to play a dominant role in how weather data gets to the public.
"The public should not have to pay twice for access to basic government information that has been created at taxpayer expense," wrote Ari Schwartz, an associate director of the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, in a July 28, 2004, essay.
Earlier this year, NOAA made the data available in XML as a test, called the National Digital Forecast Database. After receiving comments from the public and commercial providers, the agency made the decision permanent this week. Now anyone can get information in an XML format directly from the National Digital Forecast Database website.
Full story
slashdot coverage #1
slashdot coverage #2
Of course, this information has always been publicly accessible: it's just a matter of ease. The National Weather Service now makes its weather feeds accessible to anyone in open formats, like XML and RSS. Of course the commercial weather reporting industry is against it: surprise, surprise.
That used to be correct. You, Private Citizen, have always been free to collect the raw data from the NOAA. The policy the commercial weather firms arranged with the NOAA fourteen years ago was a statement that the NOAA wouldn't compete with the commercial firms, in terms of providing "finished" content.
I think the "competition" you were asking about occurred in 2003 when the NOAA started experimenting with making "point forecasts" available to the public: the weather firms cried foul. The NOAA decided to revisit their policy last year, and they requested public comment. The public outcry was loud and clear: if the NOAA was processing data at public expense, the NOAA was expected to make the processed data available to the public. And, surprisingly enough, it became their new policy despite complaints from the commercial firms. It's called the "Fair Weather Policy".
So, the point forecasts are now available on-line. How has that changed things? Not much. People still turn to the local TV station for weather in the morning, and they tune in to The Weather Channel if they're heading to the beach or the mountains.
I think where the main effect has been felt is in the industrial sector. For example, concrete companies typically rely on a very precise two hour forecast to ensure their new sidewalks won't get rained on. They used to pay lots of money to private meterologists who "insured" their forecasts (for $499.00 we'll guarantee you'll see no rain in the next two hours or we pay you $10,000.) But with NOAA point forecasts available, as a concrete company I'd be likely to take my own chances regarding rain.
John
Nice reply.
The data is already processed. Those images you see are just representations over level III data plotted over base maps. They already produce all of that level 3 data.
So, the only thing they would be doing is plotting data they've already got.
By the way, you're also incorrect about the government's priorities. After posting, I examined the NWS site and apparently they're creating new images for some radars which plot the data over a view of the terrain. And they've also produced some radial velocity images along with it. This data isn't available for most of the radar sites, but it is being developed.
Furthermore, not too long ago, the NHC was requesting comments on modifying some of its images issued to the public.
If the NWS didn't feel these things were important, would they be doing these things?
What's new here is the technology allows the NWS to provide forecast data for an exact location. It was simply a byproduct of producing an accurate forecast. The NWS simply stuck on a web front end to allow everyone access to it.
I still think the industry is not going to serve themselves well by pushing this into Congress. Right now, the vast majority of the public is blissfully unaware that if they type weather.gov instead of weather.com into their browsers, they get good local information with no advertising. Once the Commercial Weather Services Association starts raising a stink in the Senate, I think the NWS is going to make a lot of front pages around the country. I believe the NWS will get a lot more customers at the expense of The Weather Channel.
John