[CivicAccess-discuss] UK companies trying to 'Free the Postal Code"

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

Canada Post owns the Postal Code file & share use rights with StatsCan and
Elections Can.  Seems like Canada Post and Statistics Canada and Elections
Canada have an interoperability issue on many levels.

a) The Postal Code Vector and dbase files were designed for Canada posts
business and not necessarily for sharing or aligning with other Government
of Canada Files
b) Elections Canada started using the Canada Post files as it was an easy
infrastructure to connect electorate with FED boundaries.
c) Statistics Canada was using the postal code file as part of its census
form dissemination and etc.

For the postal code file to line up with the census files Canada Post would
need a business case to do adjust its file accordingly.  And the reverse is
true for StatsCan and Elections Can.  None can argue the business case and
so we have the institutional triangle.

In addition, I discovered that GeoBase, disseminates GPS accurate framework
data.  For The postal code vector file and some StatsCan files to meet the
cold standard of GeoBase, they would have to have their files also GPS
accurate.  Well, neither has a business case for doing that as the files as
they are fit their particular use cases and mandates.  So, we do not have
these considered as framework datasets.

The StatsCan street network file on the other hand, was built in
collaboration between Provinces and Territories and are GPS accurate, and
therefore could be given away since you cannot sell what you built with the
good will of others.  So this file made its way into geobase.

I do not like this nonsense any better than you do, as it stiffles
collaborative work.  But how do we get these institutions to develope a
business case to work together, get their data to line up and to share
them?  We could argue that Canada Post is a government of Canada entity -
crown corporation?...

The question then is to wonder who these institutions work for?  They are
public but their mandates are to deliver the mail, deliver the census and
deliver the elections but not to deliver the data tothe public!  where does
the public fit into this equation?

Cheers
t

On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Daniel Haran <chebuctonian at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 2:31 PM, Russell McOrmond<russell at flora.ca> wrote:
> >   I'm wondering if anyone has got anywhere with discussing this with
> > Canada Post.
> ....
> >   We could derive the same data by taking electoral district maps which
> > are already publicly available
> > http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/option/select.do?id=1169 , and
> > correlate them with postal code maps if they were made available.  I
> could
> > immagine the PostGIS query to do this (New things to learn), but don't
> > have the postal code vector file.
>
> Canada Post has an exclusive, multi-year deal with a big GIS co (ESRI,
> if I recall), so they wouldn't let you create derivatives from them.
>
> I got shapefiles for the forward sortation areas, and it was obvious
> from the results that they didn't match the Stats Can data.
>
> This whole thing's crazy.
>
> Cheers,
>
> d.
>
> PS: if anyone wants an up to date postal code => electoral district
> data, let me know and I'll re-run my scripts.
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-- 
Tracey P. Lauriault
613-234-2805
https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
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