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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.
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).
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); }
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