Auckland City: $6,000 for building outlines

I filed a request on 22 March 2009 under LGOIMA for three Auckland City geospatial datasets:

1. community board polygons for Auckland City
2. rating zone polygons for Auckland City
3. building outlines for Auckland City

(1) was requested as it’s an essential dataset for Auckland City governance, and of obvious public interest. (2) was very poorly worded on my part, but was intended to be ‘zoning’ information (so this part of the request is void due to my wording). (3) is an odd dataset with little apparent value except to researchers, planners and the council itself. If there’s any value to this 3rd dataset, it’s that it can be used in road maps to indicate the presence of larger buildings, and that providers of such maps are generally private companies.

All of the above datasets have been requested by third parties, and are fairly innocuous.

Auckland City responded on 1 April 2009 that:

1. Community board polygons would be provided under a $60/hour provision charge
2. Rating zones – (they didn’t know what I was seeking and require further clarification)
3. Building outlines would be provided for $6,600, minus a 10% discount of $660.

Some interesting notes were supplied with Auckland City’s response.

On why they’re charging for these datasets:

Auckland City Council geospatial data is generally available to anyone who requests it through our normal ‘Digital GIS Data’ ordering process.  Ordering data for own use of a person or Company  involves a fee for the data and the time spent extracting and sending it, though the data fee may be waived for very small datasets. 

and

As we have a process for purchasing a licence to use our geospatial datasets, they are not provided free of charge under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act process.

The ultimate extension of this logic is that Auckland City believes creating any bureaucratic sales process for getting information and data out of the council somehow over-rides the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act ($1 million for emails between the Mayor and CEO, anyone?). Further clarification of this stance was requested on 1 April, but Auckland City has yet to reply.

On the quality of a dataset they want to charge $6,600 (minus 10% discount) for:

The building outline dataset was digitised from orthoimagery dating from 2002.  It is rough outlines only not cartographically standardised.

My ‘grapevine’ understanding is that this dataset has been updated since 2002. But not a very good sales pitch from Auckland City here, aside from the substantial amount they’re seeking.

On licensing:

Please note that all the datasets are licensed for your own use, and not for on-sale or provision to any third party.  You will be required to agree to these conditions before the data can be provided. 

Fulfilling a request made under LGOIMA isn’t optionally dependent on such license agreements: the council must supply the requested information unless they refuse it under a stated section of LGOIMA. Auckland City appears to share the view of the New Zealand Fire Service on this matter.

Some ‘people in the industry’ have made it known that historical decisions of the Office of the Ombudsmen might be impacting Auckland City’s stance on charging for the building outlines. Please contact us if you know more about such decisions.

Further updates and commentary will be posted when Auckland City responds to a ‘please clarify’ email of 1 April 2009.