1. Purpose

The objectives of these guidelines are;

• to make access to land information affordable;
• to protect the interests of the Government and data suppliers;
• to facilitate the streamlining of information provision, and
• to increase the usage of land information.

2. Background

Land is our fundamental resource, to which our endeavours and activities are either directly or indirectly related. Information about this resource is essential for balanced growth, social equity and environmental sustainability and forms an important part of the state's infrastructure. Effective management of, and improved access to, this infrastructure is important to all levels of government and the private sector, with studies consistently showing a high cost benefit ratio of investment in land information.

These guidelines recognise that various government agencies are custodians of data sets and that across these agencies there are different pricing policies and distribution models in place. The LICC acknowledges it is the responsibility of each government custodian to determine the pricing and distribution of their land information. These guidelines and the LICC distribution model (refer Appendix 1) provide a basis for a common and consistent approach to the distribution and pricing of land information across government.

The LICC supports and encourages government custodians to license and distribute land information on a marginal cost recovery basis. This costing model includes provision for the cost of extracting and transferring the data and provision for the cost of infrastructure maintenance. The LICC considers that the adoption of a marginal cost pricing model by government custodians will increase the usage of this key component of the state's infrastructure and provide benefits to the state.

The LICC also encourages government custodians to make their data available to clients wishing to value add and on sell land data. Government custodians should, wherever possible, encourage commercialisation of the data by negotiating a royalty payment with clients which does not prohibit the viability of commercialisation. These negotiations could include provision for capping the amount of royalty payments or by waiving royalties in exchange for recognition or other quid pro quo arrangements.

A Spatial Data Distribution and Pricing Policy Proposal was distributed to stakeholders for consultation in March 2001. These guidelines have been drafted based on this consultation and ongoing negotiations with key stakeholders.

3. Scope

4. Principles

• Fundamental spatial data should be available to all sectors of the community through a range of delivery mechanisms to support economic, environmental and social needs.
• Access policies and pricing regimes should seek to maximise the usage of spatial information by the community and preserve confidentiality, privacy, security and intellectual property rights of data custodians, individuals and all sectors of the community.
• Custodians should seek to maximise the net benefits to the community when developing their spatial data access policies and pricing regimes.
• Custodians should ensure that any pricing regime is transparent and that the price of the data is readily available to clients and the community.
• Distribution of land data should be executed under a Data Agreement. Data Agreements should operate for a fixed term and the terms and conditions of the Data Agreements should be tailored to suit client demand, client use and delivery mechanisms.
• Distribution of land data on a continuous basis by a data provider to an application provider, who is dependent on the data for the continued availability of its services, should be executed under a Service Level Agreement.
• Custodians should ensure that the client is provided with metadata on provision of the data.

5. Implementation

• Writing to inner budget agencies informing them of the approval of the guidelines and the LICC Model.
• Providing relevant documentation including the guidelines, the LICC Model and relevant agreements on the LICC web page.
• Encouraging agencies to make land information readily available through a range of delivery mechanisms.
• Six months after the inception of these guidelines the LICC will survey and publish on the LICC web page custodian distribution and pricing arrangements, and update this information on a periodic basis.

6. Review

7. Definitions

Information that relates to a particular point or reference on the land or sea.

Government

Includes all inner budget agencies of the Tasmanian government.

Data Agreement

An agreement which binds the licensee to the terms and conditions under which the data is made available from the custodian.

Metadata

Metadata is data about the data. It includes descriptions of when and how the data was collected.