Comments Of
The Center For Democracy & Technology
Before The
NOAA National Weather Service Strategic Planning and Policy Office

Filed electronically at: fairweather@noaa.gov June 30, 2004

Comments on Proposed Policy on Partnerships in the Provision of Weather, Water, Climate and Related Environmental Information

NOAA's proposed policy is a good first step toward strengthening the partnership between government, academia and the private sector and minimizing the conflicts and inefficiencies of the existing system. The proposed policy effectively responds to recommendations contained in the NRC's study regarding how to coordinate interaction among the various sectors to improve the weather information system. In particular, NOAA deserves praise for its commitment to promoting open and unrestricted dissemination of publicly funded information in directing NWS to make its data available in Internet-accessible form based on recognized standards, formats, and metadata descriptions.

Contrary to objections raised by some in the private weather sector, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) believes the proposed policy strikes an important balance between protecting the rights of those who collect and disseminate data and ensuring unfettered access to information already in the public domain. Specifically, CDT has two related concerns for NWS information services in federal E-government policy:

• Public access - The public should not have to pay twice for access to basic government information that has been created at taxpayer expense.
• Competitive and diverse market - While the government generally should allow private services to utilize information and avoid competing with the private sector, providing data feeds in XML and other basic open standard formats will only help extend the marketplace by lowering barriers to entry and allowing new services to flourish.

(1) Public access

The public has already paid for NWS data and information products through taxes that subsidize its research, data collection, and product development activities. Taxpayers should not be charged again to access publicly funded observations, analyses, model results, forecasts and related information products. To the extent practicable, agencies have an obligation to make government information widely available to the taxpayers who paid for it, even if selling that information would generate substantial revenues. Accordingly, we urge the NWS to adopt a policy consistent with its long-standing practice of providing full and open access to data for no more than the cost of its preparation and dissemination.

(2) Competitive and diverse market

CDT firmly agrees with the NRC's conclusion that "making data easy and affordable to obtain helps NOAA promote scientific understanding of weather and climate phenomena, create a more informed public, provide unbiased information, and give the commercial weather industry an opportunity to flourish." To this end, harnessing the potential of the Internet and electronic database technologies to enable direct access to data in standardized formats will be crucial.

As discussed above, models and products developed by the NWS already exist in the public domain. Dissemination of vital weather and climate data compiled by the NWS should not be channeled only through for-profit vendors in the private sector who would not contribute any additional value to that basic public information. By providing equal access to NWS data at marginal costs to all individuals and entities and harmonizing standards and formats for data sources, the government can create a more level playing field for potential users of this information, thereby lowering barriers to market entry. At the same time, market competition will encourage the development of more accurate data collection methods and diverse products and services tailored to meet the varied needs of interested parties in the weather and climate enterprise.

Open standards are the key to future openness in the marketplace. In particular, the use of XML based standards offers an unprecedented opportunity. While shutting down new XML data feeds in favor of proprietary standards, may please some companies in the private weather sector today, the end result will be a less diverse and less competitive market by restricting the creation of specialized weather products, tools, and models in the academic and private sectors. Improved data access benefits all sectors in the weather enterprise by maximizing the affordability, availability and usefulness of NWS weather information services to a large population and will open opportunities for business plans that can not even be predicted today. We hope that the NWS will adopt policies supportive of technical capabilities that allow users to access information directly through standardized formats and believe that the NRC document created a reasonably clear roadmap to reach this goal.

Thank you for the opportunity to submit comments on this important issue. We commend your continued efforts to promote the broad dissemination of critical weather and climate information in an accurate, timely and equitable manner.

Respectfully submitted,

Ari Schwartz
Associate Director
Center for Democracy & Technology