Putnam County Commissioners weighing mapping data decision

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

The decision on a question raised at a previous meeting about the possible sale of global information system (GIS) information from the county's mapping system will wait for another day.

The Putnam County Commissioners said Monday evening that they are still considering whether to agree to the terms that would allow WTH, the vendor that maintains the county's GIS system, to sell the information to companies that request it.

The information in question is already publicly available, so no privileged information would be provided. However, each request of this nature takes between 10 and 15 hours of work to provide, so it is often more cost effective for outside companies to request the information from WTH and the county than to retrieve it for themselves.

At the April 7 meeting, Steve Leatherman of WTH told the commissioners that even with giving approval to the concept, the commissioners would still review each such request on a case-by-case basis.

The cost to the contractors would be $750, of which $500 would go to WTH and $250 to the county.

At the most recent meeting, County Attorney Jim Ensley said he thought the split was reasonable after he learned of the work involved for WTH in providing the information.

However, commissioners David Berry and Max Watts said they would still like the information reviewed further, advising they would like Ensley, Putnam County 911 Dispatch Director Dave Costin and a WTH representative to discuss the matter further.

One concern is making sure there is language that the outside contractors cannot turn around and resell the information to other companies.

In other business, the commissioners discussed moving forward with county website. Last week, the county council approved funding to have Jon Tesmer update the site.

With a contract now signed, individual department heads need to contact Tesmer about setting up their pages and receiving training.

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    -- Posted by Balding Eagle on Wed, Apr 23, 2014, at 6:08 AM
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