Module 3: Developing a Functional Legal Policy

3(A): Process, Documents, and Procedures

  Covering Your Ass

3(B): Operating Your Policy

  Staying Transparent & Consistent

3(C): Reevaluating Your Policy

  Good Records Let You Change Course More Easily

Module 3a: Process, Documents, and Procedures

Covering your ass.

Considerations in Statutory Interpretation

  • The court looks to determine the intent of the legislature when it wrote the statute.
  • The court interprets the plain meaning of the language wherever possible.
  • The court looks to the public policy goals expressed by the legislature in drafting the statute.

Comment 34

How to Develop a Good Geospatial Data Sharing Policy

  • Get a feel for your community.
  • Move slowly.
  • Talk to your community stakeholders.
  • Understand where the elected officials stand.
  • Read your state statues & then outline what you can and cannot do under the applicable state statutes.
  • Look for examples of policies by other communities, but never cut and paste – because you don’t know where that regulation was before you found it.
  • Hold some public comment sessions – your planning department can help you with that.
  • At these sessions explain what GIS is, why it costs so much, and what other can do with the publicly held data
  • Outline all of your policy options and paths – by including every logical outcome – before approaching the elected officials.
  • Go to the subject matter experts and the resources on the subject.
  • Talk to your organization’s legal council.
  • Come to the table with good economic numbers by estimating the costs and benefits of all of your options.
  • Be transparent.
  • Create a GIS data policy manual describing how you will manage requests, keep it updated, and deal with the unknown or the unexpected.
  • Share the manual with your user community stakeholders.
  • Then create your ordinance or resolution.
  • Once it is adopted keep good records.
  • Review the policy annually and compare your projected data sales with your actual income and costs.

Comment 35
Maybe we should find a way to break it up with headers or something so its not a big wall of text
Also the header says process, documents and procedure, I didn’t see any mention of documents but it shows how to develop the policy. Maybe adding some text to tie this section all together

Module 3b: Operating your Policy

Staying Transparent and Consistent.

Craft a Responsible GIS Data Policy

  • Write an ‘artful’ Geospatial data use license
  • Don’t add a preamble about the righteousness of your cause and your fees
  • Don’t add extraneous provisions to the data license agreement
  • Please don’t make erroneous applicability assumptions
  • Address your state’s “No commercial use” restrictions
  • Calculate reasonable charges for your GIS records
  • Offer your data in a variety of formats
  • Avoid the false equivalence of record format substitutions
  • Don’t dive up costs with record format substitutions

Comment 36

Module 3c: Reevaluating your Policy

Good Records Let You Change Course More Easily

Comment 37
This section could sure use some more words

Suggested Reading

Resources

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