OpenStreetMap’s Growing Use In Government

Today the State Department launched its official “Imagery to the Crowd” web site. This solidifies the State Department’s established practice of providing aerial imagery to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) for fast sourcing of geo data in emergencies. In a crisis situation, State Department’s Humanitarian Information Unit provides imagery and HOT in turn channels OpenStreetMap volunteers to digitize at rates that surpass the bandwidth of official agencies.

Earlier this week Mikel Maron and I had the opportunity to lead an OpenStreetMap workshop at the U.S. Census Bureau. We gave an overview of OpenStreetMap’s key functionalities, showed examples of OpenStreetMap applications, and helped their team get started editing.

The State Department’s move and the Census Bureau’s mapping workshop are just two in a series of events that highlight a growing interest by government in OpenStreetMap. The free availability of OpenStreetMap data and software and the continued maturing of OpenStreetMap, together with steep budget cuts in federal and local governments, make OpenStreetMap a more attractive option for the public sector than ever before.