Previously, I had noted of the S.786's language that it could require that the NWS makes data available in raw format. Easy to use formats might not be protected at all, especially if the private sector is deemed to be providing such products.
The silence of Senator Santorum's office on this--now more than 3 weeks have passed since I made my request for clarification on the issue of data--appeared to confirm this hypothesis. In addition, Dr. Barry Myers' expressed
opinion at a March 2004 AMS forum further reinforced this concern. In his presentation, he complained about the new NWS guidelines, "The recognition that the private weather industry is ideally suited to put the NWS information database into a form and detail that can be utilized by specific users is deleted."
The statement that private industry is "ideally suited to put the NWS information database into a form and detail that can be utilized by specific users" appeared to suggest that Dr. Myers possibly had in mind the distribution of raw data only by the NWS.
Now, there is a news report that Mike Smith, founder and CEO of WeatherData and one of the Santorum bill's advocates has exactly that in mind and this report might well be the proverbial "smoking gun" in the ongoing debate. The May 11, 2005 edition of
The Wichita Eagle reported, "Smith argues that the weather service could save money by not duplicating services provided by the private sector, such as customized digital cell phone forecasts, plotted maps and digests of severe storm reports and enhanced radar displays."
Aside from digital cell phone forecasts, which should be left to the private sector in my view, the three other items constitute data and information that should remain publicly available. If those three items are restricted, then the legislation would, in fact, be restricting and reducing the public's access to data even if some of the press releases issued by the legislation's advocates, e.g., Commercial Weather Services of America, denied this intent.
