Google Maps & World Bank Join Forces, So Why Isn’t Everyone Smiling?

Google is now working with the World Bank to make Google Map Maker more accessible to government organizations, but some experts are questioning the terms of the arrangement.

The World Bank is an international money-lending and development assistance organization, which grew out of the need to rebuild Europe after World War II. Today, it provides financial support and technical assistance to developing countries or nations in crisis.

According to the announcement on the Google Lat Long Blog, the World Bank will be a "conduit to make Google Map Maker source data more widely and easily available to government organizations in the event of major disasters, and also for improved planning, management, and monitoring of public services provision."

The Map Maker data includes mounds of information that's important to relief or emergency workers, development experts and urban planners. Some of the countries that will be launching the new program include Ghana, Kenya, South Sudan, Nepal and Haiti, countries that represent a wide range of economic statuses.

Google and the World Bank aren't strangers to one another. In April of last year, the pair called on citizens of South Sudan to help map their country, which was about to become the world's newest state. (South Sudan split from Sudan in July of 2011).

The World Bank is hailing the agreement as an advancement for international development.

"Today's technology can empower civil society, including the diaspora, to collaborate and support the development process." said World Bank Vice President for the Africa Region Obiageli Ezekwesili. "This collaboration is about shifting the emphasis from organizations to people, and empowering them to solve their own problems and develop their own solutions using maps."

However, some development experts are concerned that the licensing agreement of the partnership means that Google gets to keep all the data submitted via the World Bank.

"Information submitted by the public through Google Map Maker ('Hey, there's a clinic over here!') is not available for easy reuse by the public," wrote Nathaniel Heller, Managing Director of Global Integrity, an organization which promotes transparency and accountability in government.

Heller says there are three parts of the licensing agreement that worry him:

1. – You must not access the Map Maker Source Data through any technology or means other than those designated by Google.

2. – You must not copy, translate, modify, create a derivative work of, or publicly display any Map Maker Source Data or any part thereof for any commercial or for-profit purpose.

3. – You must not use the Map Maker Source Data to create a service that is similar to a service already provided by Google through its products or API.

Heller is concerned that these stipulations mean that Google won't allow Map Maker data to be used with other open-source tools (such as OpenStreetMap) and that it won't be available for use by small businesses in the developing world.

"I'm not a lawyer, but Google's deal is basically, 'Give us your data, we'll do with it what we want, and don't you dare try to do anything else with that data,'" he said.

Adena Schutzberg, Senior Lecturer of Geography at Penn State University, also wondered how Google and the World Bank will determine who gets access to the data and under what terms.

"Is it only during an emergency? Or when one is expected? Or is is for long-term planning for such emergencies?" asked Schutzberg. "The other thing I'm curious about is under what sort of terms (license) Google/The World Bank will hand over the data. WIll it be sharable to NGOs? To citizens?"

Google was not immediately available for comment.

Images courtesy of Flickr, plemeljr