openstreetmap.us

Public Domain Map: Crowdsourcing the Future of Government Data

08-20-2022 Jess Beutler & Maggie Cawley

It’s easy to see how OpenStreetMap could be leveraged to improve the completeness and freshness of government geospatial datasets. So why aren’t all governments using OpenStreetMap? In the US, the ODbL license has prevented government agencies from using the data. Public Domain Map aims to resolve this (and other challenges) by providing a workflow that allows contributions to be used in both OpenStreetMap and public domain US Government databases. We will share the journey of Public Domain Map, and importantly, how the project is bringing together US federal agencies and open source contributors to meet this goal.