Price monitor demands free access to geodata – and means these cantons

The federal price regulator demands nationwide free access to basic geodata. Of the 25 cantons that provide this information, eight still charge “very high” fees.

As part of its open government data strategy, the Federal Council has decided to publish all federal agency data openly, freely and in machine-readable form from 2020, the price monitor announced in its newsletter on Wednesday.

The fact that some cantons continue to charge fees for geodata appears to be business and anti-competitive.

The price monitor will therefore write to the eight affected cantons: Luzern, Vaud, Neuchâtel, Thurgau, Obwalden, Nidwalden, Jura and Appenzell Ausserrhoden. Geodata must be obtained free of charge as soon as possible.

Geodata is data with a spatial reference, ie with coordinates, place names or postal addresses. This can be digital, computer-readable data sets, but also analog data such as maps and plans, gazetteers or lists.

In the case of basic geodata, reference must also be made to a law. These are, for example, land registers, registers of buildings, traffic routes, counts, aerial and satellite images from the national survey, water data, hazard maps or land registers.

The cantons offer basic geodata on geodienste.ch. The offer includes Switzerland-wide, structurally harmonized and aggregated geodata and services in the formats WMS, WFS, ESRI Shapefile, GeoPackage and INTERLIS.

(dsc/sda)